Empower Your Enterprise with Tanzu Spring Runtime Access Now

December 19, 2023 Michael Minella

Innovation is moving faster than ever, and the ability to keep up is taking its toll on modern enterprises. Technical debt, which is incurred due to a lack of staying current with dependencies, can have a material impact on developer productivity and can make your enterprise vulnerable to the latest security threats. Tanzu Spring Runtime is a comprehensive commercial subscription that provides extended support for Java, Apache Tomcat, and the Spring portfolio—as well as a host of other enterprise-level features—enabling enterprises running in a Spring environment to take full advantage of modern capabilities.

What is Tanzu Spring Runtime?

Tanzu Spring Runtime provides  24/7/365 support from Spring experts for your entire stack for at least 12 months beyond the open source support date. During those 12 additional months of support, regular, scheduled releases give you access to patches, security fixes, and dependency updates so you can upgrade on your timeline, not ours. Spring support is provided by the same engineering team that wrote the open source frameworks you know and love, keeping backward compatibility and future-proofing top of mind, a benefit that only Tanzu by Broadcom can provide. Apache Tomcat support is provided by the top committers on the open source project with those same concerns covered. Java is supported by Bellsoft’s Liberica OpenJDK distribution, a leading OpenJDK distribution. No one else in the industry can offer support with the level of expertise on Spring environments that Tanzu Spring Runtime does.

On top of best-in-class support, Tanzu Spring Runtime also provides a collection of enterprise features that let you take full advantage of the Spring ecosystem:

  • Spring Cloud Data Flow for Kubernetes enables the management of distributed streaming and batch-processing workloads on Kubernetes.

  • Spring Cloud Gateway for Kubernetes is a developer-focused application gateway that enables the ability to route APIs and address cross-cutting concerns, such as security, monitoring and metrics, and others.

  • API Portal enables API consumers to find and try APIs by integrating with OpenAPI documentation from source URLs.

  • tc Server

Why Tanzu Spring Runtime?

The Java ecosystem is moving faster than ever. Java releases every six months, with the long-term support (LTS) release window shrinking from three years to two. Spring Boot releases every six months. Hibernate gives you six months or less for a given minor version before being moved to commercial support. Not only are changes happening faster, but they are getting more aggressive as well. Jakarta EE 11 (due out in mid-2024) will require Java 21 less than a year after it came out. Spring Boot went from Java 8 as the baseline to Java 17 when it released Spring Boot 3. Can your enterprise keep up?

Extended support for your full stack

Tanzu Spring Runtime enables you to upgrade on your timeline. Each release of Spring comes with a minimum of 12 months of open source support free for everyone. That includes bug fixes, security patches, and other requests. Tanzu Spring Runtime extends that period for at least another 12 months and guarantees that you will have 12 months of overlap with the previous release, giving you a full year to upgrade to a given version.

Spring Boot release timelines

Find support timelines for Spring Boot versions

Unlike other offerings, Tanzu Spring Runtime provides support from the original source of the frameworks. The people you know and trust for developing the Spring portfolio for the past 20 years are the same ones keeping these libraries up to date during the extended support period. The same goes for Apache Tomcat; the top committers for Apache Tomcat are the ones keeping you up to date.

Beyond the expertise provided within the support offering, subscribers to Tanzu Spring Runtime get access to the capabilities they need to operationalize their Spring workloads. Some of the offerings include Spring Cloud Data Flow for Kubernetes, Spring Cloud Gateway for Kubernetes, and API Portal for Tanzu.

Spring Cloud Data Flow for Kubernetes

Spring Cloud Data Flow orchestrates deployment and lifecycle management of streaming and batch data pipelines in cloud environments. Spring Cloud Data Flow for Kubernetes takes the orchestration capabilities of the open source project and adds the key features required for a modern enterprise. Additional features include:

  • Native Kubernetes provisioning of Spring Cloud Data Flow and projects related to other ecosystems

  • Certified container images for all components

  • Image-relocation support for air-gapped and controlled access environments

  • Enhanced configuration experience for integration of relational databases, message brokers, and identity providers of your choice

Read more about Spring Cloud Data Flow for Kubernetes in the documentation. 

Spring Cloud Gateway for Kubernetes

Spring Cloud Gateway provides a simple but familiar experience for Spring engineers to route API requests to application services. Spring Cloud Gateway for Kubernetes builds on the open source project to add key API lifecycle management features to provide a high throughput API Gateway solution. Those additional features include:

  • A native Kubernetes operator with customer resource definitions (CRDs) that enable separation of concerns for API gateway operations and application developer API route exposure and configuration

  • Dynamic API route mapping to expose on API gateways

  • Simplified single sign-on (SSO) configuration combined with commercial API route filters to enable authentication and access control

  • Support for API updates through CI/CD pipelines

  • OpenAPI v3 auto-generated documentation for each API gateway

  • Auto-configuration of API routes based on OpenAPI v2 or v3 specifications, along with dynamic addition of service and route-level filter configurations

  • High-availability configuration by setting instance count for horizontal scalability

  • Commercial container images

Read more about Spring Cloud Gateway for Kubernetes in the documentation. 

API Portal for Tanzu

API Portal serves as the destination for those who are consuming APIs in an enterprise. Whether internal or external, the ability to navigate, discover, and try out APIs is vital to modern software development. API Portal provides a one-stop solution for understanding available APIs. Features include the ability to:

  • View APIs and related documentation from OpenAPI source URL locations

  • Test out specific API routes from the browser

  • Enable single sign-on authentication with OpenID Connect identity providers

  • Enable API consumers to create and use API keys for validated access to API gateway resources

  • Secure communication through TLS configuration

  • Integrate with Spring Cloud Gateway for Kubernetes for dynamic API updates

Read more about the API Portal for Tanzu in the documentation. 

How does Tanzu Spring Runtime work?

Once you have Tanzu Spring Runtime, you get access to a few things. Tanzu Spring Runtime provides you access to Tanzu Net. This platform serves as a hub for distributing essential software, such as Spring Cloud Data Flow for Kubernetes, Spring Cloud Gateway for Kubernetes, tc Server, and other commercial distributions of open source components.

Second, you get access to a repository for all releases of open source components during their commercial support period. Tanzu Spring Runtime gives you secure direct access to the patches and updates you need in a convenient tool, enabling you to mirror this Maven repository through your own, simplifying access to these critical artifacts for your developers so you can implement the governance you need inside your enterprise.

Finally, you have access to Broadcom’s support system. Available 24/7/365, this system connects you with experts ready to assist you through challenges and help keep your enterprise operational. Get more information on SLAs and offerings.

How do I learn more?

If you have Tanzu Application Service, Tanzu Application Platform, or Azure Spring Applications Enterprise, you already have Tanzu Spring Runtime, as it is bundled with your subscription. Contact your account representative for more information. If you are new to Tanzu Spring Runtime, you can read more and contact us on the Tanzu Spring Runtime website.

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