Enterprises worldwide are embracing innovations such as the cloud to solve their digital needs, but many face challenges with workload migration and application modernization. One way organizations can ease their application modernization journeys is to adopt the 5 R’s framework—rehost, replatform, refactor, retain, and retire—allowing them to choose the right migration strategy for their specific environment.
Today, I am pleased to announce the tech preview of Application Transformer for VMware Tanzu, available for VMware Cloud on AWS and the VMware vSphere environment. Application Transformer for Tanzu is a tool designed to target replatforming and help customers simplify and accelerate their app modernization journey.
Application Transformer for Tanzu was built to discover, analyze, and transform legacy applications:
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Discovery – Application Transformer for Tanzu scans virtual machines (VMs), gathering information such as folder structure, resource pool, application names, and processes. Then, it helps create application topology, giving customers complete visibility into their application environment.
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Analysis – Technical scores generated based on the detailed information about application components together with business values enable customers to make informed decisions on which applications to modernize and prioritize.
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Transform – Application Transformer for Tanzu creates OCI-compliant container images for Linux-based applications through a simple wizard-driven process and fully automated support for Oracle WebLogic Server and Apache Tomcat. The resulting Kubernetes artifacts that are generated, such as YAML files, allow customers to quickly deploy container images in their VMware Tanzu Kubernetes clusters.
Application Transformer for Tanzu supports a broad range of application types through 200+ application signatures and VM introspection. This growing list includes WebLogic, Tomcat, and generic Java applications. The tool obtains information on applications such as application names, processes, software versions, and directory location of folders.
As an agentless tool, Application Transformer for Tanzu utilizes the VMware vCenter API to introspect VMs across an entire vSphere or VMware Cloud on AWS-based data center. Additionally, because of its integration with VMware vRealize Network Insight, Application Transformer for Tanzu can leverage vRealize Network Insight flows to automatically create an application topology with an end-to-end view, which is critical in visualizing application dependencies.
Technical scores generated by Application Transformer for Tanzu, along with business values that you can input, aid in making informed, fact-based decisions on which applications to modernize. If the decision is to replatform an application component, Application Transformer for Tanzu provides a wizard-driven process to automate most containerization tasks, such as creating docker files, generating container images, and storing them in your designated enterprise repository, and building Kubernetes manifest YAML files for Linux-based applications. If you choose to deploy the modernized application, simply use a Kubectl command to push the OCI-compliant image to a VMware Tanzu Kubernetes platform.
Application Transformer for Tanzu brings many benefits to customers, from inventory to replatforming, through innovative technologies and automation:
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Holistic view – Application Transformer for Tanzu creates visual topologies through CLI/API using information like application component metadata and dependencies.
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Efficiency through automation – Application Transformer for Tanzu reduces tedious manual processes, such as introspection, component inventory, and VM mapping.
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Flexibility – Application Transformer for Tanzu allows customers to choose the best actions from the R-framework based on scores assigned. Further, the product enables you to modernize at the speed you choose.
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Increased agility and speed to market – Application Transformer for Tanzu shortens time and reduces effort in the application modernization journey. In doing so, it helps to reduce time to market for new software and service offerings and improves developer productivity.
Application Transformer for Tanzu simplifies modernization of your legacy applications with speed and efficiency. To learn more about Application Transformer for Tanzu, visit the resource page or email us at AppTransformer@vmware.com.
There is no commitment or obligation that technical preview or beta features or offerings will become generally available.
