The atmosphere at VMware Explore North America 2023 was nothing short of inspiring. It served as a hub for VMware customers, industry leaders, and power users, including developers and platform engineers using VMware Tanzu, Spring, and VMware Aria. Together, we embarked on a voyage to discover the latest advancements poised to revolutionize how to best approach containerized applications.
The central themes of develop, operate, and optimize framed our discussions throughout the event. These themes served as guiding principles that led us through a journey of discovery, instead of trying to imagine what could be possible. Kicking things off, Johan Marais opened our eyes to exciting possibilities as he shared the story of Discovery Limited’s transformation in our solution keynote. Presenters from OneMagnify, America First Credit Union, and LendingClub followed with deep dive reviews of their successful Tanzu implementations in full-length breakout sessions.
Kerry Schaffer's agile transformation at OneMagnify
One of the highlights of the event was Kerry Schaffer's enlightening presentation on OneMagnify’s journey to implementing agile methodologies and Kubernetes with the Tanzu platform. Their transformation had a clear mission: to meet customer needs, enhance developer satisfaction, and boost productivity.
OneMagnify’s Tanzu journey began when they first introduced agile practices. This transition marked a significant shift for the organization, demanding meticulous planning to eliminate developer frustrations and achieve productivity gains. They also used Tanzu to operate as a custom development shop. Customers often come with a marketing problem and require OneMagnify to solve these problems while aligning with their customers’ platforms (i.e., Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, and VMware vSphere). These developed solutions also have to be modular and scalable. As Kerry mentioned, OneMagnify supported an automaker in launching an iconic vehicle. The buzz around this launch was so great that there were far more orders than initially anticipated. As a result, OneMagnify had to help the automaker scale out of the datacenter and meet customer ordering demand using Tanzu Application Service.
Despite having over 75 developers, OneMagnify efficiently manages their current Tanzu Application Service environment with less than one full-time operator, thanks to comprehensive automation built into VMware Tanzu. Starting with their initial onboarding with Pivotal Labs (now Tanzu Labs), they further improved agile processes, fostering collaboration among teams. This led to happier teams, increased developer enthusiasm, and a smoother platform adoption process. The abstraction of infrastructure and code, as well as the use of application accelerators, simplified developers' lives and helped them adapt to different environments through automated pipelines.
OneMagnify's approach combined the Tanzu platform with cultural and process transformations to achieve faster delivery, heightened productivity, and a more confident and sustainable software development and delivery process. These achievements were further validated through recognition such as the CIO 100 award and improved employee satisfaction metrics.
AFCU’s focus on people, process, and technology
Tim Hansen from America First Credit Union (AFCU) shared his valuable insights into the platform operator side of the equation and addressed the challenges and objectives associated with their transition. Their primary goal was to reduce the time it takes to resolve issues by optimizing processes and introducing automation. AFCU also aimed to unleash the potential of developers with diverse skill sets, allowing them to contribute beyond traditional coding roles.
AFCU sought curated software with reliable sources and robust patch management to ensure the use of up-to-date and secure components. Tim also stressed the importance of vendor support in a multiplatform environment and highlighted the value of Tanzu for governance and management. He noted the importance of recognizing diverse stakeholders within the organization with a call to involve network specialists, system administrators, and others in the platform's implementation. Tim acknowledged that not everyone needed to become a full-stack developer; instead, the focus was on making everyone more valuable in the pipeline and automation processes.
To do this, they had to break down silos, support multiplatform and multivendor environments (e.g., mainframes, power platforms, X86, and public cloud), and achieve a unified approach to address diverse needs while controlling costs. From a process perspective, Tim emphasized the need for guardrails to ensure that code contributions resulted in supportable and secure solutions, all while considering regulatory requirements.
Before taking on the full transformation, ACFU started small, involving subject matter experts and selecting well-known applications like Airflow and ML Flow to expedite production. The professional services arm of VMware, being Tanzu Labs, also helped AFCU through the necessary project management and discussions.
LendingClub’s challenges in navigating cloud migration
Lastly, Mike Pawlowski from LendingClub took us on a journey through his company's cloud migration and optimization efforts. Their migration story began several years ago when they embarked on a transition from on-premises data centers to Amazon Web Services (AWS). Their strategy involved lifting and shifting applications to AWS and modernizing them later, with their big data platform leading the way in this migration.
After navigating some learning experiences (including an economic slowdown stemming from the pandemic) LendingClub was able to develop expertise and operational capabilities that aided their modernization initiative. The big data platform successfully completed its transition to AWS last year, and they are now on track to completely exit their datacenter.
Throughout this migration journey, the company overcame common cloud migration challenges involving cost transparency, forecasting, measuring success, and operational efficiency. Mike acknowledged that demonstrating the value of optimizing cloud spend could be challenging, but recognized the importance of showcasing these achievements.
To address these challenges, LendingClub established a Finops program and started their exploration and implementation of VMware Tanzu CloudHealth (formerly VMware Aria Cost), bringing together directors responsible for managing various aspects of cloud spending. As Mike described, their mission was to maximize business value for every dollar spent in the cloud. The team aimed to include finance and business groups in their efforts once the migration was complete, implementing showback and chargeback processes. The implementation was faster and more straightforward than anticipated, resulting in significant time savings, improved visibility into required tags, and valuable real-time data.
VMware Tanzu CloudHealth became the centerpiece of LendingClub’s Finops practice, providing real-time data accessible to everyone in the organization. This transparency facilitated conversations and decision-making, empowering the Finops team to monitor and optimize cloud spend effectively. Despite the initial challenges, their success metrics were ultimately impressive: they spent less, reduced manual data collection efforts, and cultivated trust from leadership in their ability to optimize and manage their growing presence in the cloud.
Join us and learn more!
The stories shared at VMware Explore Las Vegas 2023 showcased how the VMware Tanzu and VMware Aria platforms can enhance modern day practices for developers, platform operators, and executives alike. In a world of cloud and Kubernetes chaos, VMware aims to provide customers with the platform necessary to develop, operate, and optimize modern applications.
For those of you in Europe, South America, or Asia, join us at VMware Explore as we come to Barcelona, Singapore, São Paolo, and Tokyo to learn more about VMware Aria and VMware Tanzu and see the journeys of even more customers firsthand.
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