.NET means a lot to me. It’s the first real programming framework I learned, nearly 20 years ago. And I still use it regularly to this day. Heck, I just wrote a book about it! So what was I thinking 2 ½ years ago when I joined a company that’s deeply invested in the leading Java framework, Spring? There’s no doubt that Pivotal makes Java development great, and designed Pivotal Cloud Foundry (PCF) to be the ideal place to run it. But back when I joined the company, there were already efforts underway to bring cloud-native practices to Windows and .NET. That’s only expanded since then. We’ve taken another major step forward today by becoming a corporate sponsor of the .NET Foundation.
The .NET Foundation is an independent, non-profit org that shepherds open-source .NET technologies and the broader .NET ecosystem. Today, the Foundation announced an open membership model, and Pivotal jumped at the chance to invest in the future of .NET. As a corporate sponsor, we’re going to sit on the advisory council, collaborate more closely with the .NET engineering team, and help grow the .NET community.
We’re not casual bystanders to the .NET ecosystem. Pivotal created Steeltoe, a popular library for bringing microservices patterns to .NET apps. This open-source project (donated to the .NET Foundation in 2017) applies to new or modernized .NET apps, either .NET Framework or .NET Core. Many large companies are running Steeltoe-powered apps in production, and we’ve got an exciting roadmap.
You can’t invest in .NET without also investing in Windows. While .NET Core on Linux is the future, .NET Framework on Windows is the present. Pivotal brought the infrastructure-as-code and immutable infrastructure patterns to Windows Server through Pivotal Cloud Foundry (PCF). PCF customers are deploying, managing, and updating fleets of Windows Servers almost entirely through automation. On every cloud, public and private.
All this Windows Server automation is in service of accelerating software development. Developers push .NET apps with a single command and leverage buildpacks to create the package deployed to native Windows Containers in PCF. We’ve built buildpacks for both .NET Framework and .NET Core apps. That saves developers time, while standardizing the deployment process.
Our Windows and .NET engineers teams are some of our fastest growing units at Pivotal. They’re innovating and improving the experience for operators and developers. We recently spun up a .NET Developer Experience team whose sole purpose is making .NET apps great on PCF. They’ve already done some powerful work around mounting file shares, and remote debugging.
All this great .NET technology goes to waste if you’re not sure how to use it in your environment! Our App Transformation team has a .NET group which works with clients to scope their portfolios, figure out modernization strategies, and document the recipes that help you apply modern practices to your .NET apps. This team is full of .NET experts who understand how to bring new distributed systems concepts to your apps while getting these apps onto continuous delivery pipelines.
.NET has a bright future, and Pivotal is thrilled to play a bigger role in its success. Try out PCF today and discover the new way for .NET apps to thrive. You can use our hosted version for free and try out .NET Core apps, or deploy a full PCF which includes the Windows Server environment. Then check out my new book on modernizing .NET apps, or our many whitepapers that offer practical guidance on creating and maintaining .NET apps.
