VMware Tanzu Labs
Build a platform

Build a custom app platform with Kubernetes

For your organization to succeed, you need to deliver innovative products more rapidly and provide the value your customers expect. That requires a Kubernetes strategy, a cutting-edge platform, and the technical expertise to deliver it in production. And that’s where VMware Tanzu Labs comes in.

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Learn about our approach

$2 million saved over four years

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We pair alongside your team to show you how to build, manage, and scale Kubernetes

Every organization is different. There’s no single right answer to many technology challenges. That’s why Tanzu Labs will work with you to design, build, and scale a Kubernetes-based app platform using commercial products, pure open source components, or a mix of both.

No matter your strategy, our world-class experts will help you implement and scale a production app platform that delivers enduring value for your business and a great developer experience.

“Humana worked with VMware Tanzu to help build and expand our digital enrollment platform, starting with a tech stack, including the Tanzu platform, that would allow us to optimize for quality from the very beginning. Our process of design and implementation was iterative and continually validated with our customers with the help of the Tanzu Labs team.”

Sarah Cooke, Humana's Experience Center

What we’ll do together

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Discover

Take the first step.

Understanding where you are in your platform journey and identifying the long-term business goals for your platform will allow you to focus on areas of development that meet your organization’s needs. You may be taking the first step on your Kubernetes journey or be further along, looking to scale, manage, and secure your platform. During this planning stage, we lay the foundation for what’s to come and define success for the rest of your organization.

Identify areas of opportunity, risk, and mitigations for your app platform and targeted apps.

Get an outcomes-based roadmap and plan how to achieve your key business objectives based on research and evidence.

Plan for increased security, stability, and speed of feature delivery.

Provide executive awareness of goals, challenges, opportunities, and next steps.

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Build and launch

Establish a platform developers want to use.

We’ll build a Kubernetes-based app platform. Our team will work with yours to leverage the best tooling for both infrastructure and developer needs. Tanzu Labs can get you up and running quickly with VMware Tanzu Activation Services for VMware Tanzu for Kubernetes Operations and for VMware Tanzu Application Platform, reducing your time to value.

Understand application workload requirements and optimize the platform to run those applications.

Collaboratively install, configure, and integrate the components needed for a developer-centric, production-ready platform.

Enable a dedicated platform team in user-centered, iterative approaches to operate and manage your cloud native platform.

Establish a secure, Kubernetes-based path to production for apps.

Start Day One operations with an app in production.

Create a feedback loop with developers to foster a healthy DevOps environment.

Areas of focus

Kubernetes installation

Cluster bootstrapping and lifecycle management handled

Storage Integration

Integrate underlying storage providers with containers

Container Networking

Provide container networking plugin, configure with best practices, and integrate with underlying network

Service Routing

Expose apps, balancing load, and securing traffic

Observability

Logging, monitoring, alerting, and tracing for the cluster and apps

Platform Security

Admission control, identity, and runtime security

Platform Adopted

App running on the platform

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Develop and evolve

Migrate apps, onboard developers, evolve capabilities, and adopt a product mindset.

Accelerate platform adoption and success at scale. Here’s how we’ll do it:

Create a developer on-ramp for low-friction, self-service migration.

Minimize source code changes required.

Drive platform features based on common application patterns.

Build confidence in your platform with your developers.

Establish processes for continued app migration.

Automate platform deployments, patching, upgrades, and operations.

Evolve capabilities to meet changing needs of your developers and apps. Learn how to treat your platform like a product.

Areas of focus

Kubernetes Availability

Platform built atop Kubernetes made available for developers

Developer Workflow

App development, build, and testing lifecycles

Application Enchancements

App practices to enable resilience, observability, and scaling of an app

Build and Packaging

Building, containerizing, versioning, and packaging apps

Application Lifecycle

Automating advanced app lifecycles such as stateful workloads

Observability

Tracing, logging, and monitoring practices for cloud native apps

Cloud Native Apps

App deploying, running, and scaling successfully on cloud native infrastructure

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Secure

Reduce risk by securing the path to production for your applications.

Implement tooling and DevSecOps practices to ship high-quality code securely and reliably to production and fix security vulnerabilities faster. Here’s how we’ll do it:

Secure the application source code by implementing strategies to ensure upstream code is secure.

Manage app dependencies using regular scans to ensure all dependent libraries are patched and free of common vulnerabilities and exposures (CVEs).

Secure CI/CD build systems with permissions for system use correctly in place and configured.

Secure image build and registry by ensuring base images are trusted and signed and that control policies are enforced for the image repository.

Secure runtime environment with zero-trust architectures and security information and event management (SIEM), along with advanced threat detection tools.

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Manage

Evolve practices and tooling to keep pace.

Master the skills needed to run a modern platform. Then establish modern practices for sustained cloud native success.

Update and patch your platform to achieve vulnerability and legacy budgets, while maintaining availability goals.

Respond to incidents and learn through retrospectives.

Extend your platform with new features to meet business needs.

Enable consistent visibility into platform metrics.

Work together to define service-level objectives (SLOs) for the platform.

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Implement a Secure Software Supply Chain

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Why You Should Treat Platform as a Product

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Our services

Supporting icon Tanzu Activation Services

Get up and running quickly with VMware Tanzu. We’ll install, configure, and integrate VMware Tanzu into your environment and establish a secure application pipeline. Our expert engineers will work side by side to enable your team of operators and developers to use, run, and manage the application platform. We’ll also get the first app running on your new platform to realize organizational goals and reduce time to value for your investment.

Supporting icon Platform Development

Our Kubernetes architects can help you design, build, and scale a production-ready app platform leveraging VMware Tanzu, Kubernetes, and commercial and open source building blocks. Provide your developers with an app platform tailored to your portfolio and business objectives.

Supporting icon Secure Software Supply Chain

Improve automated tooling and implement DevSecOps practices so that your teams can ship high-quality code securely, reliably, and consistently to production. We’ll start with a detailed assessment of your current path to production and identify opportunities to improve security, speed, and scalability. Then, we’ll tailor your engagement to address your specific needs and goals across every stage of your software supply chain.

Supporting icon Platform Management

We offer a fully managed platform service including patching, updates, and 24/7 incident response in alignment with your availability objectives. Or we provide hands-on enablement to teach your team how to expertly manage your platform.

Supporting icon Health Check

We’ll conduct a 360-degree assessment of your platform health, ensuring that the dedicated people in your Platform Team and the VMware Tanzu technology can provide mission-critical services to your customers. We’ll build a plan for continued refinement, identifying opportunities to improve the people, process, application/platform design, and technology to support you in getting the best results from your platform.

Supporting icon Modern Platform Governance

Prioritize platform feature delivery while achieving your security and compliance objectives. Together, we’ll internally market your VMware Tanzu (or another Kubernetes platform) to acquire users and workloads and build a super-user community. Our experts pair with your people to establish and enable your dedicated Platform Team.

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