VMware Tanzu Customers Finding New Home on Cycle.io After Broadcom Acquisition

In the wide ocean of tech companies, we watched a giant shark get consumed by a megalodon.

At the end of 2023, Broadcom completed its acquisition of VMware, and despite many concerns around the future of VMware licensing and products used by small and enterprise companies alike, the acquisition went forward and the megalodon had its meal

Scooped up in the maw was VMware Tanzu, a 'portfolio of products and services designed to transform the way enterprises build, run, and manage applications on Kubernetes'. With Broadcom's acquisition, however, came doubts about the future of Tanzu and other VMware products and services, and a huge spike in those looking for alternatives, including Cycle.io.

What is Tanzu?

Tanzu is VMware's proverbial hat in the ring for a solution to modern day microservices/containerization, as VMware aims to stay relevant in the ever-changing landscape of cloud and virtualization. Given the focus on security compliance and supply chain management, Tanzu is obviously positioned for larger companies, especially those looking to 'modernize' their legacy systems.

VMware lists over a dozen different products in the Tanzu portfolio, with core and auxiliary/supplementary offerings. Of the core offerings, we have some similarly named products that achieve similar goals, aimed at different audiences:

• Tanzu Application SERVICE, which is a high-level platform aimed mostly at running microservice applications, especially legacy applications and modernizing them into a containerized ecosystem. TAS is more aimed at large organizations in the midst of modernizing.
• Tanzu Application PLATFORM, which is a much more technical platform, built on top of another platform, Cloud Foundry and other CNCF tooling. This is the foundation of Tanzu Application Service, and is particularly suited for organizations looking to adopt Kubernetes and improve their software supply chain.
• Tanzu for Kubernetes Operations a grouping of various Tanzu products bundled together to make building out your DevOps platform easier. It's targeted at IT operators and platform teams who are responsible for managing Kubernetes infrastructure and operations across different environments.
• Tanzu Mission Control a centralized management platform for consistently operating and securing Kubernetes infrastructure across multiple teams and clouds. It is designed for teams overseeing Kubernetes operations and governance across multiple clouds and clusters.

What is Cycle.io?

For comparison, Cycle.io takes a very different approach. Built from the ground up to solve the essential problems of DevOps, Cycle.io presents an opinionated, vertically integrated platform aimed at being as powerful as Kubernetes, with a fraction of the complexity. By delivering its own custom OS directly to customer-owned infrastructure, Cycle.io does the heavy lifting of managing customer-owned infrastructure, while providing an integrated custom container runtime and auxiliary services to reduce 'decision fatigue' and the overall difficulty of day 2+ operations.

We've coined this approach LowOps, and similar to its cousin Low-Code, describes perfectly the reduced DevOps burden placed on the end-user when utilizing Cycle.io. The LowOps platform provides all the capabilities of a more complex self-managed system, without most of the overhead and management those platforms mandate.

Why are people leaving Tanzu for Cycle.io?

Since the acquisition, Broadcom has been making sweeping changes to VMware, and VMware has admitted that the changes are worrying customers, while at the same time trying to assuage their fears. This has come amongst thousands of layoffs, changes to their business licensing model, and adjustments in priority. The uncertainty has led many to seek out alternatives to VMware products, and Tanzu is no exception. As long time customers of VMware abandon ship, many are finding Cycle.io to be a superb choice to migrate their DevOps ecosystems to.

Though rife with differences, both Cycle.io and VMware Tanzu share a similar goal: A better way to do DevOps in a multi-cloud environment, and reduce the inherent complexity of a Kubernetes-based DevOps ecosystem. Tanzu chose to build on top of this complexity, while the philosophy of Cycle.io is to reject it and build a laser-focused and opinionated platform without the baggage.

So, how does Cycle.io stack up against Tanzu?

Key Similarities:

• Both platforms operate across multi-cloud, on-premises, or hybrid environments.
• Utilization of customer-owned hardware.
• Importing & building container images, container orchestration, networking, load balancing, and DevOps automation tools are fundamental features.
• Designed to meet the demands of large-scale or enterprise-level applications
• Equipped with user interfaces for platform management and visualization
• Optimized for collaboration across multiple teams.
• Security is a top priority, with extensive measures in place.

In broad strokes, Cycle.io and Tanzu both provide wide-encompassing DevOps solutions that address the needs of large-scale organizations. But of course, there are a myriad of differences between the two.

Key Differences:

• Built atop the Cycle Container Runtime, Cycle.io contrasts with Tanzu's foundation on Kubernetes, Cloud Foundry, and various third-party tools.
• Cycle.io is a fully managed solution, while Tanzu requires users to host and maintain the platform themselves.
• Featuring a 'batteries included' approach, Cycle.io is presented as a comprehensive solution, in contrast to Tanzu, which requires integration of numerous components. Further muddying the waters, each of Tanzu's services can be broken down into multiple editions, versions, and interweaved bundles, and several have undergone recent name changes, which can make understanding which part(s) of Tanzu are right for your organization a challenge
• The Cycle.io team is focused exclusively on DevOps solutions, while Tanzu is just one small piece of VMware.
• Support is included in Cycle.io's licensing

The complexities of selecting the right Tanzu components, its reliance on disparate tooling, and heavy focus on enterprise-only clients draws a stark comparison to Cycle.io. It's difficult to understand exactly how each of Tanzu's components fit together, and highlights the necessity to be an expert across many different areas in order to utilize a platform designed to make Kubernetes simpler.

Given these comparisons, it's easy to see why Cycle.io is a natural choice for those considering or migrating off of VMware Tanzu. Cycle.io offers the same level of power, while drastically reducing the amount of setup and maintenance necessary to get to production-ready status and stay there. If you're looking for more features and capabilities in a simpler package, Cycle.io is a powerful Tanzu alternative to consider.

Looking for an alternative to Tanzu? Want to learn more about Cycle.io?

You're not alone! Whether you're looking to move away from Tanzu, or looking at other Kubernetes alternatives, we'd love to chat with you about your goals and how Cycle can help!

💡 Interested in trying the Cycle platform? Create your account today! Want to drop in and have a chat with the Cycle team? We'd love to have you join our public Cycle Slack community!