Despite turbulent economic times, IT budgets are staying flat or growing, with investment priorities focused on increasing operational efficiency and profitability, according to the latest State of the CIO survey. Enterprises are looking to optimize their existing IT infrastructures and do more with what they have to free up resources—including talent and funding—for innovation projects. As an industry stalwart, VMware is the partner customers need right now to navigate their IT and innovation strategies through the next several years.
Survey shows 91 percent of respondents’ IT budgets would increase or stay the same in 2023. (Source: CIO.com)
In addition to IT leaders, the State of the CIO Survey included line-of-business leaders (about 20 percent of the respondents), pointing to a tightening relationship between those previously siloed concerns. It’s not surprising that improving profitability was listed as a top priority, along with those we typically consider to be IT-led initiatives, like operational efficiency and cybersecurity.
The State of the CIO survey shows operations and security are top IT priorities. (Source: CIO.com)
Ultimately, enterprise architects, platform engineers, and cloud operations teams are turning to vigorous automation to improve business processes and free up resources to fund innovation-generating initiatives that help them uncover new revenue streams and compete more effectively into the future.
With a family of offerings that help platform engineering and cloud operations teams simplify automation, improve their security posture, and manage their cloud costs, VMware Tanzu for Kubernetes Operations and VMware Aria help customers do more with what they have while navigating the reality of multi-cloud, and preparing for advancements in edge computing. Meanwhile, VMware Tanzu Application Platform, VMware Tanzu Application Service, and VMware Tanzu Labs help development teams maneuver through the complexities of distributed systems and a sprawling landscape of tools and services, while adopting modern platform operations and application development practices.
Multi-cloud operational efficiency
VMware Tanzu Mission Control helps enterprises automate management tasks with support for infrastructure as code and cluster configuration. Teams can adopt a GitOps approach and consistently manage changes to applications and the platforms on which they run across clouds.
Since first announcing Terraform provider support for Tanzu Mission Control, VMware continues to add management capabilities for consistent Kubernetes deployment, policy enforcement, and security. For more details about Tanzu Mission Control automation and package management with Terraform, GitOps, and Helm, check out this webinar for practical demos of how to enable the continuous delivery feature, attach a git repository to a group of clusters, create an Amazon EKS cluster via Terraform for lifecycle management, and other capabilities that enhance security and streamline multicluster management.
Smart organizations are adopting technologies and practices that allow them to continuously secure their applications—and the platforms on which they run—without hindering developer productivity. One way to do this is to adopt a shift-left approach to security that ensures security is integrated throughout the app development and delivery process.
We've added multiple security and policy improvements in Tanzu Mission Control, including the ability to mutate security context for containers and modify default Open Policy Agent (OPA) Gatekeeper policy settings. This allows organizations and administrators to adjust the Gatekeeper deployment settings to their needs at all levels, such as organization, cluster group, and cluster. Furthermore, with the industry moving away from PodSecurityPolicies (PSPs), organizations can use Tanzu Mission Control to more easily migrate their clusters away from PSPs using OPA, while still maintaining the security posture of their organizations.
Committed to supporting customers in their multi-cloud application modernization efforts, the VMware Tanzu team works with our cloud provider partners to offer a streamlined, vendor-agnostic Kubernetes management platform. With that in mind, we’ve recently announced a preview of lifecycle management for Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS). Users can now connect Tanzu Mission Control to their Amazon Web Services (AWS) account and create, update/upgrade, and delete EKS clusters and node pools. With this latest development, VMware will soon expand its support for EKS clusters to include lifecycle management of existing EKS clusters that were not created by Tanzu Mission Control. Platform engineering teams will be able to automate EKS lifecycle management with the Tanzu Mission Control Terraform provider and support the use of custom application machine images (AMIs) when provisioning EKS clusters and node pools.
Invest in DevX for business agility
With CIOs and senior IT leaders increasingly responsible for revenue-generating initiatives, software must be treated as a strategic corporate asset. Enlightened executives understand that app development and delivery are critical disciplines and that developer experience (DevX) initiatives require their attention and funding.
68 percent of CIOs say they’re tasked with creating revenue-generating initiatives. (Source: CIO.com)
VMware’s own Executive Pulse survey found that outcomes like customer and employee satisfaction and revenue growth are at the top of the priority list. And studies, such as this one conducted by Forrester and commissioned by VMware, demonstrate the relationship between a good DevX and higher-quality software. Listen to this webinar for more about the topic of business growth and DevX.
Chart showing top IT goals for 2023. (Source: VMware FY24 Executive Pulse survey)
The flagship Tanzu Application Platform and Tanzu Application Service help enterprises deliver their applications quickly and more securely while easing the complexity associated with the rich ecosystem of cloud native tools and services. By streamlining the process of getting applications to production, simplifying code handoffs between teams with logical separations of concerns, and offering a curated open source experience, VMware Tanzu allows for consistent policy enforcement without hindering innovation and developer velocity.
Tanzu Application Service 4.0, anticipated for general availability this month, is packed with features focused on enhancing developer experience and improving platform engineering. New features include a new developer portal based on the open source Backstage portal builder, integrated Windows Authentication support for .NET framework, custom app metric rate limiting, and expanded developer marketplace offerings. Be sure to register for our upcoming webinar to get a deep dive on the 4.0 release.
Not to be outdone, Tanzu Application Platform 1.5 continues to deliver on its mission to streamline developer and platform engineering experiences, providing end-to-end app security, supporting flexibility with your favorite tool integrations, and much more. With enhancements being announced today, teams can focus on building and delivering applications to production across any cloud and any Kubernetes distributions. Additions include:
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Enhanced IDE support for Visual Studio Code & IntelliJ
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Automated developer namespace provisioning
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Tanzu Application Platform on AWS QuickStart, now for multicluster deployments
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Seamless Spring Boot app migration
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End-to-end app security capabilities, including TLS auto-configuration out of the box, External Secrets Operator support, new scanner integration for Trivy OSS vulnerability scanner by Aqua Security, and more
Read more details about what’s in the Tanzu Application Platform 1.5 release, and register for our upcoming webinar.
Integrating the edge
Today’s enterprise leaders seek to advance their strategic goals at the edge as well, expecting to increase operational efficiency and profitability, improve product quality and visibility into the business, and support more actionable decision making through edge computing initiatives.
Top benefits of deploying apps at the edge (Source: ESG Research, The State of Digital Ecosystems at the Edge, Sept 2022)
Hindered by challenges like high-infrastructure costs and security policy management at the edge, most enterprises see edge application and management platforms that can provide consistency across edge domains as key to their success.
Importance of platform consistency (Source: ESG Research, The State of Digital Ecosystems at the Edge, Sept 2022)
VMware answers these needs by enabling enterprises to extend their Tanzu investments to the edge with VMware Edge Compute Stack, a purpose-built edge compute platform designed to run edge-native applications. Featuring new edge-optimized pricing, VMware Edge Compute Stack now enables enterprises to scale cost effectively over thousands of edge sites, while providing platform consistency across cloud and edge implementations.​
The new pricing helps lower infrastructure costs at the edge by recognizing that the utility of servers running at distributed edge sites often differs from that of servers running in centralized clouds. With three editions designed to meet varying needs, and per-core pricing for the number of cores needed over one-, three-, or five-year terms, VMware Edge Compute Stack offers the flexibility needed to address wide-ranging customer needs now and in the future.
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