VMware Tanzu Application Platform is an integrated developer platform that accelerates secure software delivery by establishing golden paths to production. It is built based on the rich Kubernetes ecosystem and provides a consistent experience on any conformant Kubernetes environment - on-premises or on public cloud.
With Tanzu Application Platform 1.9, available today, we boost innovation for highly regulated companies by further improving the experience of installing and running Tanzu Application Platform in air- gapped environments and by reducing our release cycles.
Bringing innovation faster with more frequent releases
As we love to repeat, software agility drives business agility and competitive differentiation. The examples of companies that became market leaders in “traditional” segments by becoming elite at delivering software are countless: Tesla has the largest capitalization among all automakers, Airbnb has disrupted the accommodation market without owning any hotels and Netflix has transformed entertainment forever. After all that is also our promise with Tanzu Application Platform: “Faster, More Secure Paths to Production”.
Starting with this version, Tanzu Application Platform updates will be coming faster. As our product is maturing, we have made its deployment and upgrading easier with features such as the Tanzu Mission Control-based lifecycle management, and we are ready to reduce our release periods to 1-2 months. This change will allow us to provide access to our latest features sooner and iterate more tightly with our users on improvements.
An application platform for highly regulated industries
Efficient software delivery does not need to be a privilege reserved for companies that can use public clouds. With our previous release, Tanzu Application Platform 1.8, we helped companies improve their security posture with support for SLSA Level 3, automated secure builds, and streamlined vulnerability scanning for air-gapped Environments with integration with Aqua Trivy.
With this release we enhance our developer portal to work behind a corporate proxy. Your teams can now route all developer portal traffic through an HTTP/HTTPS proxy with support for secure authentication in corporate environments that limit direct internet exposure.
Improving feedback loops with historical performance tracking
Improving developer productivity is a crucial objective for every large organization. But how can a team get better at it? Continuous performance monitoring and fostering a blameless culture are some of the best practices. While Tanzu Application Platform cannot change your team’s culture overnight, it can foster the transparency needed for a healthier, more efficient development process.
With years of rigorous research, the DevOps Research and Assessment (DORA) research program has identified a few metrics that correlate with software delivery performance. Aiming to improve performance visibility, we are enhancing our DORA metrics plugin in our Backstage-based developer portal by adding charts with historical data for lead time and deployment frequency. DevOps and Platform Engineering teams can use those charts to easily recognize behavioral patterns across different teams, identify bottlenecks, and establish best practices. Additionally, this will provide visibility into how Tanzu Application Platform helps shorten lead times and increase deployment frequency.
Expanded Universal Base Image (UBI) compatibility
Producing container images that are consistently maintained and universally supported is important for development teams. It allows developers to build, share, and collaborate on containerized applications they can trust to run anywhere with full support and compliance. With Tanzu Application Platform 1.9, we’ve expanded our UBI Buildpack compatibility to support .NET and Web Server application types in addition to Java and Node.js. This gives developers more consistency in their container images across a wider array of programming languages.
Learn More
Visit the Tanzu Application Platform page to explore how our product can help your organization deploy software more efficiently and securely. If you are getting started with Tanzu Application Platform, the Tech Zone page is your one-stop-shop for technical content and education.
