The goal of many enterprises is to drive developer productivity, deliver more value for their customers and, ultimately, better business outcomes for the organization. With this in mind, Microsoft and VMware announced the general availability of Microsoft's Azure Spring Cloud in September 2020, allowing teams to focus on building Spring applications while removing the burden and related challenges of setting up and managing Spring cloud infrastructure. Since then, VMware has continued to collaborate closely with Microsoft to identify opportunities to deliver additional value for developers and enterprises as they scale their application portfolios. Enter Azure Spring Cloud Enterprise Tier. First announced at SpringOne 2021, Azure Spring Cloud Enterprise Tier is a fully managed service from Microsoft built in collaboration with VMware. The Enterprise tier combines Microsoft's cloud expertise with commercially supported Spring runtime and VMware Tanzu® components.
Today, we are pleased to share that Microsoft has now made the Azure Spring Cloud Enterprise Tier available in public preview. The latest update offers teams more great features to enable you to securely deploy, operate, and scale Spring applications on Microsoft Azure while providing the advanced configurability, flexibility, and support needed to fit enterprise requirements.
Here are some of the key features included in Enterprise tier:
Portability and flexibility in workload management – One of the reasons developers love Spring is that it enables teams to build highly portable applications and microservices. Whether you are looking to run your applications entirely on Azure or in a hybrid-cloud environment, Azure Spring Cloud Enterprise Tier enables you to seamlessly lift and shift Spring workloads between Azure Spring Cloud, public and private clouds, and on-premises.
Advanced configuration and integration – Container creation, management, and governance is automated using VMware Tanzu® Build Service™, allowing teams to control build dependencies, configure Cloud Native Buildpacks or commercial VMware Tanzu® Buildpacks to manage existing build environments, and deploy polyglot applications (for example, an Angular front end) alongside their Spring workloads.
Azure-native experience for Spring – All Azure Spring Cloud tiers, including Enterprise, run on a fully managed Azure environment, giving Azure users access to a familiar environment and the broader Azure ecosystem.
What's new in the public preview
API discovery and routing (using Spring Cloud Gateway for VMware Tanzu® and API portal for VMware Tanzu®) enables developers and operators to easily manage and discover existing APIs and create controllers for new APIs from within their Azure Spring Cloud Enterprise Tier environment. Teams can easily build configurable, on-demand API Gateway instances with enhanced security, networking, and SSO integration and "automagically" aggregate, visualize, explore, and secure access to all the APIs exposed via any or all Spring Cloud Gateway for Tanzu instances.
Advanced and long-term support helps ensure the security and stability of your Spring application portfolio. With the included VMware Spring Runtime entitlement, teams using Azure Spring Cloud Enterprise Tier get comprehensive support for Spring, including access to Spring experts and releases for critical bug fixes and security issues. Most importantly, VMware Spring Runtime now also includes long-term support, which extends support for a minimum of 12 months after each version reaches end-of-life for the various Spring.io projects.
How to get started
Azure Spring Cloud Enterprise Tier gives teams the advanced configurability, flexibility, and support needed to grow your enterprise-grade application portfolio with the convenience of managed infrastructure.
To access the features included in Azure Spring Cloud Enterprise Tier public preview, visit the Azure Marketplace here.
Learn more about Azure Spring Cloud Enterprise tier:
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Microsoft: Azure Spring Cloud Enterprise is now available in public preview
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Introducing Azure Spring Cloud Enterprise Tier (September 2021)
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