Tanzu Application Platform v1.12

VMware Tanzu Application Platform (commonly known as TAP) is an application development platform with a rich set of developer tools. Tanzu Application Platform offers developers a paved path to production to build and deploy software quickly and securely on any compliant public cloud or on-premises Kubernetes cluster.

Tanzu Application Platform overview

Tanzu Application Platform:

• Delivers a superior developer experience for enterprises building and deploying cloud-native applications on Kubernetes.
• Allows developers to quickly build and test applications regardless of their familiarity with Kubernetes.
• Helps application teams get to production faster by automating source-to-production pipelines.
• Clearly defines the roles of developers and operators so they can work collaboratively and integrate their efforts.

Operations teams can create application scaffolding templates with built-in security and compliance guardrails, making those considerations mostly invisible to developers. Starting with the templates, developers turn source code into a container and get a URL to test their application in minutes.

After the container is built, it updates every time there’s a new code commit or dependency patch. An internal API management portal facilitates connecting to other applications and data, regardless of how they’re built or the infrastructure they run on.

Simplified workflows

When creating supply chains, you can simplify workflows in both the inner and outer loop of Kubernetes-based application development with Tanzu Application Platform.

• Inner Loop

  • The inner loop describes a developer’s development cycle of iterating on code.
  • Inner loop activities include coding, testing, and debugging before making a commit.
  • On cloud-native or Kubernetes platforms, developers in the inner loop often build container images and connect their applications to all necessary services and APIs to deploy them to a development environment.

• Outer Loop

  • The outer loop describes how operators deploy applications to production and maintain them over time.
  • On a cloud-native platform, outer loop activities include:
  • Building container images.
  • Adding container security.
  • Configuring continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines.
  • Outer loop activities are challenging in a Kubernetes-based development environment. Application delivery platforms are constructed from various third-party and open source components with numerous configuration options.

• Supply Chains and choreography

  • Tanzu Application Platform uses the choreography pattern inherited from the context of microservices^1 and applies it to CI/CD to create a path to production.^2

Supply chains provide a way of codifying all of the steps of your path to production, or what is more commonly known as CI/CD. A supply chain differs from CI/CD in that with a supply chain, you can add every step necessary for an application to reach production or a lower environment.

To account for the developer experience gap, the path to production allows users to create a unified access point for all of the tools required for their applications to reach a customer-facing environment.

Instead of having separate tools that are loosely coupled to each other for testing and building, security, deploying, and running applications, a path to production defines all four tools in a single unified layer of abstraction. Where tools typically cannot integrate with one another and additional scripting or webhooks are necessary, a unified automation tool codifies all interactions between each of the tools.

Tanzu Application Platform provides a default set of components that automates pushing an application to staging and production on Kubernetes. This removes the pain points for both inner and outer loops. Operators can customize the platform by replacing Tanzu Application Platform components with other products.

The following diagram shows the layered API and capabilities of Tanzu Application Platform.

For more information about Tanzu Application Platform components, see Components and installation profiles.

Notice of telemetry collection for Tanzu Application Platform

Tanzu Application Platform participates in the VMware Customer Experience Improvement Program (CEIP). As part of CEIP, VMware collects technical information about your organization’s use of VMware products and services in association with your organization’s VMware license keys. For information about CEIP, see the Trust & Assurance Center.

You may join or leave CEIP at any time. The CEIP Standard Participation Level provides VMware with information to improve its products and services, identify and fix problems, and advise you on how to best deploy and use VMware products. For example, this information can enable a proactive product deployment discussion with your VMware account team or VMware support team to help resolve your issues. This information cannot directly identify any individual.

You must acknowledge that you have read the VMware CEIP policy before you can proceed with the installation. For more information, see Install your Tanzu Application Platform profile. To opt out of telemetry participation after installation, see Opting out of telemetry collection.