VMware vs Pivotal

Thought this was interesting development. Would be good to hear Steppanwulf or Tinker or others comment if they have thoughts on what it all means and ultimately if it is just further validation of Pivotal or a threat to the stock?

https://www.forbes.com/sites/janakirammsv/2018/06/30/vmware-…

  1. Confusion with PKS

Till now, the industry looked at PKS as the official Kubernetes offering from VMware and Pivotal. With VKE, there is bound to be a confusion about choosing the right offering. Since PKE has traction, Pivotal will continue to push PKS. VMware’s marketing team has a tough job ahead in differentiating VKE from PKS.

Dreamer

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I only look at this from a Pivotal perspective. No reason to look at it otherwise and it is cutting into my glass of wine and watching latest Star Wars move on Netflix as my rat terrier won’t move and let me it a foot up on my normally quite delightful (and surprisingly from Walmart) foot rest in home theatre. May need to employ violence here shortly to remedy. But he is so cuteeeee…

Anyways, two things: Some of the features of VKE such as Smart Clusters may eventually become available to PKS customers. After all, these are two different products from the same developers.. Yeah, but it is also like two brothers competing for the same cheerleader. But eventually they will get over the girl and become loving brothers again - maybe.

PKE has traction, Pivotal will continue to push PKS. VMware’s marketing team has a tough job ahead in differentiating VKE from PKS.

Since it just came out, not sure how they are measuring “traction” but I do like to hear it in reference to Pivotal.

In the end Kubernetes is not nearly as easily to manage and program for as is Cloud Foundry and particularly Pivotal Cloud Foundry. If you have become a PKF customer you are not going to look to VMWare to fulfill your needs. However, if you are skipping PKF and want to be more of a free spirit, and be dependent on none, and want to take more granular control, then you will skip PKF (at least for now) and go Kubernetes yourself. If you do that, at least according to this article, there are multiple better options than VMWare to go with.

And in the end, Pivotal is absolutely vendor neutral. You go with Pivotal, you avoid all lock in. This includes VMWare and Pivotal will have you up and running on VMWare Cloud, if that is what you want. VMWare, and none of the others, will reciprocate with all their competitors.

Hey, look at that. Drama upstairs. Beagle went into guard mode. Probably another frog from the pool attempting egress. Rat terrier felt compelled to jump off and run upstairs to patrol and guard and left my foot rest. All problems solved! Even my glass of wine some how was refreshed (I am blaming it on some mysterious force in the house and not something that I actually did. But will enjoy it regardless. Pity the poor phantom frog).

Tinker

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I’ve been crazy busy at work, but been meaning to post about Kubernetes, which is getting really big traction across the board. Good that Pivotal got there in time, and is a leader in the space - but have to watch how the Kubernetes dev tools work out - RedHat is doing well, and though RedHat is growing a bit slow for this board, I may make a small investment, to make sure I keep an eye on it.

MongoDB is making a huge bet on Kubernetes (naturally, since it is a container that can hold a MongoDB), and also has a strong working partnership with RedHat - they are getting growth out of that relationship.

I don’t think VKE is a threat to Pivotal for a few reasons:

  • VKE is a public cloud only offering, which is strange since VMWare created the Hypervisor space - it should be easy for them to support private cloud as well. But as it is, I can’t think of any reasonable use case why an enterprise company would be interested in a public cloud only Kubernetes environment - they could just use a cloud titan Kubernetes offering directly

  • The likely VMWare intention (just my guess) is that a major sales pipeline will be VKE rolled up into PKS as add-on offering which simplifies multi-cloud deployment by PKS. It would make a lot of sense for VMWare to ask for some payback from Pivotal for the sales help VMWare provided to Pivotal in the past, and are still providing - and it makes sense for customers who want multi-public-cloud and it would probably be accretive for Pivotal.

  • There is of course some risk of customer confusion - you really don’t want that in this extremely competitive Kubernetes situation.

Concerning Kubernetes, the picture is more confused. The base Pivotal product runs code. So thing you can’t put into a base Pivotal container is data - that is outside in some other managed system, and you point to it via configuration from your Pivotal container. Of course PKS manages Kubernetes containers so it can manage data containers that way. But Kubernetes is a bolt-on for Pivotal - they will need to dance fast to make sure they stay at the cutting edge.

Pivotal still has the advantage that it is by far the best tool for improving developer productivity for cloud-native applications, and that it is truly vendor independent. But if enterprises feel they need to have at least some Kubernetes in order to host data work loads in the cloud, then other Kubernetes tool sets and new startups with newer containers will have a chance.

I’m going to be keeping my eyes open

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but been meaning to post about Kubernetes, which is getting really big traction across the board. Good that Pivotal got there in time, and is a leader in the space

In an earlier post, you claimed PVTL had already won. So yea, Kube is a competitive threat to PCF… more like an existential threat actually.

VKE is a public cloud only offering, which is strange since VMWare created the Hypervisor space

Not strange at all. If you are comfortable running your stuff in the cloud, then it is perfectly reasonable that your control plan (VKE) also run in a public cloud.

The base Pivotal product runs code. So thing you can’t put into a base Pivotal container is data - that is outside in some other managed system, and you point to it via configuration from your Pivotal container.
I think you are referring to PCF being designed to support 12-factor applications. All applications need data, regardless of whether those applications run on PCF or Kube. Best practice is for modern ‘cloud native’ applications too comply to 12-factor principles. PCF and Kube have no problems attaching to data sources.

Pivotal still has the advantage that it is by far the best tool for improving developer productivity for cloud-native applications, and that it is truly vendor independent.

If given the choice, developers prefer to use the toolchains that are native to the public cloud platform they are developing on. AWS toolchains for AWS. Azure toolchains for Azure. IBM toolchains for IBM Cloud. There are ways to achieve app portability but in general, developers could care less about portability. Developers are driving a lot of purchasing decisions these days.

PCF has not ‘won’. Kube is very flexible from an operations standpoint and it can be skinned with high quality development toolchains to achive a ‘portable’ development experience similar to PCF. Kube also seems to have more mindshare than PCF.

Be careful with the narrative… it works great right up until it stops working.

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If given the choice, developers prefer to use the toolchains that are native to the public cloud platform they are developing on. AWS toolchains for AWS. Azure toolchains for Azure. IBM toolchains for IBM Cloud. There are ways to achieve app portability but in general, developers could care less about portability. Developers are driving a lot of purchasing decisions these days.

Johngalt, that is a very large generalization you have there. “developers” prefer. You mean to speak for all developers?

Numbers tell much more than generalizations.

Lets take databases. From your logic, and perhaps I am missing the nuance, this would imply that developers would prefer to work with cloud native databases as well. But last I looked not a single cloud titan database has come even close to making it into the top 10 of popular use.

And in fact, if you look at the most desired to be used databases, the cloud titan offerings are in low single digits in result, at the back of the pack.

True, this is only a survey of 100,000 developers, hardly all developers, but I think a bit more credible than speaking for all developers.

I would also like to hear you speak on why a customer should prefer (1) cloud lock-in, and (2) the added burden of infrastructure that Kubernetes does not abstract away. I have seen multiple presentations comparing Cloud Foundry vs. Kubernetes. They all reach the same exact conclusion:

(1) Cloud Foundry is simple and abstracts nearly entirely the infrastructure so you do not have to worry about it; (2) Kubernetes is great, and it allows a developer more granularity as it relates to the infrastructure, but at the cost of not abstracting away much of the infrastructure and at the cost of removing some simplicity, and at the cost of requiring more developer labor to make it all work.

In fact, as to Kubernetes, the sole advantage is the ability to create more granularity over your infrastructure, and the cost is materially greater complexity and loss of efficiency. And for many that is a fine trade off. For others it is not.

Instead of reaching conclusions like “all developers” tell us exactly why Kubernetes is an existential threat to Pivotal.

Also, if all developers prefer cloud native tools, then why cloud titan databases are also rans in the scheme of things?

Well thought out information to these questions would be extremely informative for us.

Thank you.

Tinker

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Tinker,
Your point is well taken. My information regarding developer preferences comes from two sources… personal interactions with developers and discussions with analysts (pretty much all the big ones).

The nuance here is that what developers want and what the people who are responsible for the business want are not always perfectly aligned. If your corporate strategy is all in on, say, AWS, then even your business leaders have decided portability is not important. It happens.

I am missing the nuance, this would imply that developers would prefer to work with cloud native databases as well. But last I looked not a single cloud titan database has come even close to making it into the top 10 of popular use.

Completely agree here… developers prefer to use databases that are available as a service from the cloud vendors. MongoDB falls in this category.

In fact, as to Kubernetes, the sole advantage is the ability to create more granularity over your infrastructure, and the cost is materially greater complexity and loss of efficiency. And for many that is a fine trade off. For others it is not.

I think it’s fair to say that Kube has greater portability than PCF. All of the major cloud vendors have Kube services available as a service. No need for PCF. The ease of use will also improve… it’s just a matter of time before really high quality open technology toolchains emerge that support Kube/container based app development across all of the public cloud vendor Kube cluster. There is nothing stopping from Kube having ease of use, portable development, and operational flexibility.

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For those like me who do not understand the tech that closely, here is more on PKS from Rob Mee, PVTL CEO, during the earnings call last month:

  1. Pivotal Application Service or PAS, which takes a developer’s latest changes and within seconds has them running securely in a production environment. Pivotal Container Service or PKS, this is a joint collaboration between Pivotal, VMware and Google Cloud to deliver enterprise-grade Kubernetes. PKS enables operators to reliably deploy and run containerized workloads across private and public clouds.

  2. PKS 1.0 was released in February. Demand for PKS is growing quickly, particularly among VMware customers looking to add container management to their private clouds.

  3. Specifically, with PKS, we have started to see the VMware sales force extend our account coverage and accelerate our sales cycles. We expect PKS will seed cross selling opportunities for other products across our portfolio, over time.

  4. I think, really, we don’t see them as sort of separate customers, really PAS and PKS or Pivotal Application Service and Pivotal Container Service are really part of the overall PCF platform, and essentially both inherit the same underpinnings and the same underlying security, day 2 operations and other advantages that they have. What we believe is that different workloads can run on each, and PKS really expands the number and kind of workloads that we can run on the platform. In other words, workloads that are directly containerized by our customers as opposed to PAS which takes source code from developers and containerizes it and then runs it on the platform.

  5. We’re seeing a lot of adoption from existing customers. A lot of our existing customers are investing in PKS. They have workloads that they want to run – they aren’t necessarily a great fit for our PAS offering. And so, they’re really glad that Pivotal is bringing a Kubernetes offering to market and it runs on the same platform as PAS. And so, there, we have a lot of customers that are jumping in and getting their feet wet with that right now. What we think is a real advantage of it is that it enables a very small team of operators to deploy and update dozens or hundreds of Kubernetes clusters with relative ease and that’s something that’s differentiated. The VMware connection there is very helpful because we are activating their large sales force to help us go to market there; we’re also integrating with their networking capability, NSX T and that’s something that solves one of the biggest challenges of using Kubernetes in a private cloud setting.

  6. We definitely see PKS expanding, both the addressable workloads for our existing platforms and also driving a lot of new customers to us. And that’s – some of the customers are customers that haven’t considered PCF in the past. So, that’s good for us.

  7. we’ll bring to bear all of our strategic services for PKS customers. And that includes innovation and net new application development in collaboration with Pivotal Labs; it includes platform build outs [ph] which help customers operate the platform, application migration services to help them successfully move, legacy workloads to the platform. And we’ll bring those to bear with VMware customers who buy PKS as well.

  8. we now offer PKS, which is comparable to open shift and it’s offered within the PCF platform. And the platform allows customers to run those workloads anywhere and on-prem off-prem. So, we think that in terms of customer acquisition, our average relationship with customers is quite large relative to the competition. And that represents more of a strategic relationship and mission critical workloads getting on to the platform.

  9. I am not sure if I can say that PKS is necessarily any different than PAS in terms of being a catalyst for migration to the public cloud. I think it really expands the addressable workloads whether they’re running on-prem or off. And I would guess that it’s much like PAS in that regard. So, probably not too much differentiation between those two abstractions that run on the platform.

10.What we’re also seeing with PKS is that the interest in building services that integrate with that is a lot of demand for that as well. So, we think we’ll see our marketplace expand with PKS as well. And we’re going to continue to press on that. We have a lot of great joint go-to-market opportunities with a lot of ISV providers.

See more at: https://seekingalpha.com/article/4181209-pivotal-software-in…

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One of CloudFoundry’s competitive advantages is that it has a mature deployment engine, BOSH, which enables features like scaling, resurrection and monitoring of core CF components. BOSH also supports many IaaS layers with a pluggable cloud provider abstraction. Unfortunately, BOSH’s learning curve and deployment configuration management are nightmarish. (As a BOSH committer, I think I can say this with accuracy.)

Kubernetes’ deployment abstraction is still in its infancy. Multiple target environments are available in the core repo, but they’re not all working, well tested, or supported by the primary developers. This is mostly a maturity thing. One might expect this to improve over time and increase in abstraction. For example, Kubernetes on DCOS allows deploying Kubernetes to an existing DCOS cluster with a single command.

This is consistent with everything that I have seen, heard, read, and what the numbers and actions of the players say, and what makes sense in the scheme of Google being a quite busy company with Kubernetes far from being its core focus, unlike PCF is for Pivotal.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/32047563/kubernetes-vs-c…

The point being is that (1) Cloud Foundry enables aligning an entire enterprise under the cloud foundry umbrella that is an entirely big thing in terms of corporate uniformity, the lack thereof has been a major issue, (2) Cloud Foundry is more efficient, simple as that, and (3) Kubernetes has attributes that are superior in some things, but these superior attributes (and superior is subjective, but is superior in the opinion of a good many people) come at the cost of giving up ground on uniformity, simplicity, and efficiency. There is a trade off.

And finally, unless Google spins off Kubernetes as a separate business, there is no way in heck the issue of being well-supported by the vendor is every going to come close to how Pivotal supports you.

But yes, overtime, Kubernetes will improve, and so will Pivotal.

Whether or not Kubernetes can ever get to “good enough” so no one will ever want to go to Pivotal is a common long-term threat (that rarely, but occasionally, comes to pass) in the technology landscape. Microsoft certainly did that to Apple on the PC. Windows was “good enough” even though it mostly sucked.

I do not think that customers come to Pivotal simply to help them with their Kubernetes issues, but rather based upon a holistic list of concerns and issues, and Kubernetes support is just one of those elements that needs to be checked off.

By the same token, someone who does not want the holistic solution provided by Pivotal, and wants to retain their way of doing things, and adopts Kubernetes as their solution, is not going to be looking at Pivotal anyways.

Companies look at Pivotal because they are in pain and scared, and Pivotal creates not just a better way to improve app production but the entire developer culture to make it happen. Either a company wants and needs this, or a company can keep doing things in their own way and make Kubernetes part of their siloed developmental infrastructure. A choice some departments make and others do not. Perhaps Docker becomes part of the infrastructure as well. No reason a company cannot have some departments Kubernetes and some using Docker.

Tinker

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