Open source software (OSS) has been at the center of all multi-cloud and app modernization strategies over the years. Given the ever-growing capabilities and flexibility offered by the OSS ecosystem, they are certain to continue playing a definitive role in any modern IT infrastructure. But as enterprises have increased OSS adoption and matured in their multi-cloud and modernization initiatives, they have also been faced with a growing number of challenges—particularly in terms of security and tooling—as the State of Software Supply Chain Survey 2022 reports. With the aim of better supporting the OSS needs of customers and also helping them navigate through these challenges, VMware acquired Bitnami in 2019. Our team at VMware is not just augmenting the potential of Bitnami, but is also innovatively leveraging its capabilities by building new tools and solutions to unlock new use cases and benefits. We are delighted to share some of the recent highlights of our work here.
VMware Image Builder is now in beta
Continuously packaging, verifying, and publishing thousands of software artifacts across multiple platforms, day in and day out, is not the easiest of tasks for any business. Unfortunately, this has become the way of life for enterprises in this multi-cloud world.
The State of Software Supply Chain report 2022 states that enterprises invariably deal with their build pipeline through multiple tools, tasks, and teams and are increasingly making an already tedious process inefficient. To address this issue, we previously announced a tech preview of a new product called VMware Image Builder. This collection of services aims to efficiently consolidate and automate the build-pipelines of enterprises. Now, at VMware Explore 2022, we are excited to announce that VMware Image Builder is in beta!
VMware Image Builder is a platform-agnostic, API-first modular service that automates the creation of secure, trusted, and continuously maintained software artifacts (compliant with corporate standards) to publish to developers as building blocks in the development process. Built by leveraging the build pipeline engine that has been powering Bitnami over the years, VMware Image Builder essentially allows the enterprise DevSecOps teams to utilize the tried and tested Bitnami pipeline to automate their packaging, verifying, and publishing practices.
Operators can use VMware Image Builder to package artifacts into multiple formats (e.g., containers, Helm, Carvel, open virtual applications), keep them up to date and deliver to developers. Developers can then leverage the ability of VMware Image Builder to integrate directly into pre-existing development platforms and continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) pipelines. They can quickly verify their changes through a series of automated tests which include compliance checks, functional and performance tests, and vulnerability scans across multiple Kubernetes distributions and cloud platforms. Compliance teams can use the product to ensure the traceability of all artifacts and versions included in the software packages. To summarize, VMware Image Builder helps users across the DevSecOps stream in replacing the many point products they use, while streamlining and automating the build pipeline.
If you would like to be considered for the VMware Image Builder beta list, please reach out to us at [email protected]. Our experts will get in touch with you shortly to explore the possibility of working together to achieve your business goals while still fine-tuning the product.
VMware Application Catalog now GA for subscription cloud service providers
VMware Application Catalog (formerly Tanzu Application Catalog) is a catalog of trusted, continuously maintained, and verifiably tested OSS images, custom-built to enterprise specifications, and privately delivered directly to a customer’s registry of choice. Launched in March 2020, VMware Application Catalog was built in part thanks to many years of Bitnami experience, and has now become a critical part of the VMware Tanzu portfolio in helping to address the OSS needs of several enterprises. We are pleased to announce that VMware Application Catalog is now generally available for our subscription cloud service providers.
Over the years, VMware Cloud providers have played a critical role in delivering VMware technology to the market in a rapid and cost-effective manner that customers increasingly demand. With this release, they can now consume VMware Application Catalog in a pay-as-you-go subscription model and augment their already robust developer-ready cloud offerings.
According to 2022’s State of Software Supply Chain report, 90 percent of enterprises use OSS in production, 94 percent of which admit that they have security concerns while doing so. With secure, production-ready OSS images offered by VMware Application Catalog, cloud service providers can address the security concerns of enterprises looking to use OSS in production. The OSS images offered by VMware Application Catalog can be consumed as containers, Helm charts, and virtual machines, and with the ability to be deployed anywhere– VMware and non-VMware platforms. This flexibility allows the cloud service providers to meet their customers wherever they are in their multi-cloud efforts. Lastly and very importantly, with VMware Application Catalog, cloud service providers can better serve the security and compliance needs of customers in highly regulated industries such as banking, financial services, healthcare, and government.
Bitnami Application Catalog in Tanzu Mission Control
VMware Tanzu Mission Control is a centralized management hub with a unified policy engine that simplifies multi-cloud and multicluster Kubernetes management across stakeholder teams within the enterprise. Bitnami Application Catalog is expected to be accessible directly via Tanzu Mission Control’s GUI in early 2023 to facilitate the consumption of OSS images as Helm charts.
Tanzu Mission Control has so far provided its users with easy access to Carvel-based OSS packages. In addition to that, Tanzu Mission Control will soon support consumption of OSS images packaged as Helm charts through Bitnami Application Catalog. This will provide users with added flexibility while building modern cloud native applications as they'll be able to directly access more than 100 popular OSS images from Bitnami’s repository, including PostgreSQL, Redis, MongoDB, MariaDB, NGINX, Apache Kafka, and more.
Want to learn more? If you are attending VMware Explore 2022 Europe, join our sessions to get your questions answered directly by our experts and stop by the VMware Tanzu booths for live demos!
