From the transformative power of generative AI to groundbreaking developments in silicon and middleware models, the tech landscape is experiencing unprecedented changes, setting the stage for a remarkable era of innovation.

Tanzu, a new cloud-native application developed by VMware Inc., empowers developers to easily build, deliver and operate powerful cloud-native apps across multiple clouds, even further accelerating the fantastic changes shaking up the tech industry, according to Purnima Padmanabhan (pictured), senior vice president and general manager at VMware.

“The singular goal of Tanzu is to help customers build their applications fast and deliver it to whatever cloud of their choice,” she said. “If customers choose AWS, we want to make sure that the entire development experience and the speed with which they can build applications is truly world class. Can eight months be down to eight weeks? Eight days? That is the goal in terms of building an app.”

Padmanabhan spoke with theCUBE industry analyst John Furrier at the “Supercloud 5: The Battle for AI Supremacy” event, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed Tanzu, the reorganization of VMware into four divisions and the convergence of platform and data engineering.

Consolidating data and application services

The core of Tanzu is the application platform, a Kubernetes-based application platform that allows users to curate a beautiful developer experience and accelerate build paths, according to Padmanabhan. Another massive component of Tanzu is the application services, a Cloud-Foundry-based platform that enables developers to rapidly build their applications.

“Last year we introduced this notion of an all-knowing hub which knows your state of the multicloud universe. Now that is rebranded to Tanzu Hub,” Padmanabhan explained. “What Tanzu Intelligence does is for all the applications that you build, it delivers the ability to manage cost, performance and security of the application, from when you’re defining the application to when it is operating and running in your environment.”

When applications are built, developers frequently must switch between different information sources to gather the correct data and understand the performance of an application. The Tanzu Hub enables developers to access all this information in one place.

“We were able to launch and explore the Tanzu Intelligent Assist, which is our generative AI-based assistant,” Padmanabhan said. “Similar to the launches you’re seeing here today, where you can have a conversation with this assistant about your application — ‘What is my application that needs support? What, where am I running into problems? How do I optimize my cost?’ — you’re having a conversation with the system and the system tells you what to do.”

Another key discussion point: the divergence of platform and data engineering. Developers should have access to a streamlined platform that integrates all essential tools for creating applications with generative AI, a platform that is both efficient and predominantly geared toward platform engineering teams, according to Padmanabhan.

“Now developers can say, ‘Hey, platform engineering team, use Tanzu,'” Padmanabhan said. “‘Then instead of taking eight weeks to deploy my code, you can do it in eight minutes or in eight days.’”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the “Supercloud 5: The Battle for AI Supremacy” event:

Photo: SiliconANGLE