In 2019, Microsoft and Pivotal (now VMware) announced Azure Spring Cloud, a fully managed service for Spring Boot applications. We set out to solve many of the common challenges enterprise developers face when running Spring Boot applications at scale. The service manages dynamic scaling, security patching, out-of-the-box instrumentation for monitoring, and more so developers can focus on their apps. Since then, we’ve worked with many customers including Kroger, Swiss Re, Raley’s, and Digital Realty to help them adopt the service.
We also learned that some customers need more. Many are running thousands of Spring Boot applications on-premises and need advanced capabilities to accelerate their Spring modernization projects. Based on our learnings, we started worked on a new Azure Spring Cloud tier with commercially supported components to meet the needs of enterprise customers. Now, we are announcing the availability of Azure Spring Cloud Enterprise in preview.
Azure Spring Cloud Enterprise is a managed service for Spring that is optimized for the needs of enterprise developers. We have collaborated with VMware to combine the cloud platform expertise of Microsoft with the innovation of the VMware Tanzu portfolio. Azure Spring Cloud Enterprise adds commercial Tanzu components built specifically to address enterprise requirements around configuration, integration, flexibility, and support.
Figure 1: Example—Azure Spring Cloud pricing tier selection, including Enterprise tier
Commercial VMware Tanzu components
With Azure Spring Cloud Enterprise, customers can use the VMware Tanzu components they know and love on managed Azure infrastructure. Tanzu Build Service, Tanzu Application Configuration Service, and Tanzu Service Registry are available during preview. Customers will have the flexibility to select which Tanzu components they want during or after instance creation. Microsoft and VMware will continue to add more Tanzu components such as Tanzu Spring Cloud Gateway and Spring Cloud Data Flow* to the service, providing increased value to customers.
*The Azure Spring Cloud Enterprise roadmap is not confirmed and is subject to change.
Figure 2: Example—VMware Tanzu settings and component selection in Azure portal
Advanced configurability and flexibility
Large enterprises often have complex workflows and need additional configuration options for their environments and development processes. Tanzu Build Service supports customizable Buildpack configurations that automate container creation and governance. Developers also get the full benefits of the Azure platform with limitless scaling and global deployment options, as well as integration with Azure services. And customers can move their existing Spring workloads built on Tanzu components to Azure Spring Cloud Enterprise, using the service to provide on-demand Spring Cloud infrastructure.
Spring Runtime support
Azure Spring Cloud Enterprise includes VMware Spring Runtime support for Spring projects. This gives you access to Spring experts and access to special versions of popular Spring projects specifically designed for enterprise use. With expert assistance, you can unlock the full potential of the Spring ecosystem and jumpstart your Spring application development.
Fully integrated with Azure
Azure Spring Cloud Enterprise runs on Azure in a fully managed environment. You get all the benefits of Azure, and the experience is familiar and intuitive. Just create your instances using a provisioning tool of your choice—Azure portal, Azure CLI, Azure Resource Manager Template, or Terraform.
Figure 3: Example—Azure Spring Cloud Enterprise creation review
After you create your instance and deploy your applications, you can easily monitor with Application Insights or other application performance management (APM) tools of your choice. As with the standard tier, Azure Spring Cloud Enterprise comes with out-of-the-box support for aggregating logs, metrics, distributed app traces, and alerts.
Figure 4: Example—Application transactions visible through Application Insights “Application Map”
Get started
Azure Spring Cloud Enterprise provides customers with advanced configuration capabilities and managed Tanzu components, all backed by the enterprise promises customers expect from VMware and Microsoft. We would love to see you try the service and share your feedback—sign up for the preview by clicking “Contact Me.”
You can also learn more about Azure Spring Cloud Enterprise from VMware.
