Enterprise Java app modernization as a managed service via Spring Boot
Microsoft has announced the availability of a preview version of Azure Spring Cloud Enterprise. Azure Spring Cloud Enterprise is a managed service for Spring Boot, the Java open-source microservice framework. Azure Spring Cloud Enterprise is aimed at helping Java enterprise apps move to the cloud, scaled to enterprise needs.
Microsoft introduced Azure Spring Cloud in 2019 as “a fully managed service for Spring Boot microservices.” Microsoft partnered with Kubernetes specialists Pivotal to launch the service. Pivotal was an EMC and VMware-incubated startup that went back to the VMware mother ship later that year.
Little surprise, then, that VMware’s Tanzu – its Kubernetes app management platform – figures heavily in Azure Spring Cloud Enterprise. The managed service automates container creation, management and governance, aiming to ease operational burdens on enterprise IT operators who manage apps at scale.
Azure Spring Cloud Enterprise provides more commercial-strength Tanzu components for enterprise customers, said Julia Liuson, Microsoft Corporate Vice President, Developer Division.
“Many [customers] are running thousands of Spring Boot applications on-premises and need advanced capabilities to accelerate their Spring modernization projects,” said Liuson in a blog post at the time of the original announcement.
The added Tanzu tools help enterprises address configuration integration, flexibility and support missing from the earlier offering.
Liuson said the added Tanzu components help enterprise customers grow their app portfolio while offloading operational complexity to Microsoft and VMware. The solution can help developers “lift and shift” apps made using the Spring framework to any compute environment, not just Azure Spring Cloud, she said.
“We’re also committed to making it an application platform where you can deploy polyglot applications that are inherently portable across any Azure service, any cloud, or any on-premises system,” said Liuson.
Tanzu for enterprise Kubernetes
VMware has recently underscored Tanzu’s suitability as the go-to Kubernetes management tool for the enterprise. VMware in January released Tanzu Application Platform (TAP), an app modernization toolkit. TAP combines various components to make it easier for developers to build and manage cloud apps using Kubernetes. The solution works with Kubernetes IaaS offerings from the major hyperscalers. That includes Microsoft Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) and Google Kubernetes Engine.
Nvidia has announced its AI Enterprise support for VMWare’s vSphere with Tanzu. vSphere is VMware’s cloud computing virtualization platform. vSphere with Tanzu creates a Kubernetes control plane in the vSphere hypervisor layer to help manage containerized cloud applications.
