Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Pivotal Cloud Foundry vs VMware Tanzu Platform comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

Pivotal Cloud Foundry
Ranking in PaaS Clouds
8th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
VMware Tanzu Platform
Ranking in PaaS Clouds
9th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
Build Automation (11th), Cloud Management (18th), Development Platforms (2nd), Container Management (3rd), Service Mesh (3rd), Agile and DevOps Services (3rd)
 

Featured Reviews

Stephen  Hack - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to use, simple to sign-in, but lacking graphical interface
Pivotal Cloud Foundry is used as a cloud platform Pivotal Cloud Foundry has helped our organization by the way we've set it up, it's easy to sign in, bind services, push services, and create YAML files. The most valuable features of Pivotal Cloud Foundry are its ease of use and the command line…
SiddhitRenake - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to register multiple Kubernetes clusters, offers a single pane of visibility on its dashboard, and perform lifecycle management operations
Our TMC usage was limited, and exploring it further was hindered by the lack of an on-premise model. Due to compliance issues with the SaaS model, we couldn't proceed with it as a production-grade product. So, an on-premises model would have been useful for us. VMware rolled out an on-premise model for TMC, allowing for an on-premises implementation, which we learned about six months ago. Also, cost is always a concern. Smaller companies might find the price a bigger issue. Since we were at a large data center, the price might not have been a concern for us. Smaller and medium businesses might hesitate due to the price tag. VMware can be quite expensive.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Pivotal Cloud Foundry is very easy to use compared to other cloud technologies. It has a very good performance."
"The most valuable features of Pivotal Cloud Foundry are its ease of use and the command line interface has the ability to push instances to the cloud easily."
"It is a scalable product...We are not facing any particular issues since most of the applications in our company are written in Java and .NET."
"It provides a set of developer-friendly tools that simplify application deployment."
"It supports CI/CD, and is integrated with the CI/CD very well."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is its ability to scale. The services that connect to the database are also very good."
"I find the ease of deployment and management of microservices to be the most valuable features. The platform also has good auto-scaling capabilities."
"The most valuable feature of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is the UI, it is easy to use."
"It definitely gives the end customer a good overview and perspective of running applications in terms of overall workload footprint. TMC provides a very detailed description of your cloud-native application in the form of graphical visualization."
"The multi-tenancy with the VCD is great."
"VMware Tanzu Mission Control has many valuable features, such as ease of use and customization."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is the ability to check the flow of all the different variants within our applications."
"Tanzu is easy to upgrade and scale, whether we're talking about horizontal or vertical scaling. It is as smooth as possible without any downtime. The platform maintenance, upgrading, and operations part is very smooth."
"The most important feature of Tanzu Mission Control is its integration with the other products, especially with ESX and vSAN. This is a strong part of Tanzu Mission Control. In other solutions, such as OpenShift or Kubernetes, you can find similar features, but they don't have similar integration. With Tanzu Mission Control, you get a total solution with only one provider. You have the integration with the infrastructure, virtualization of networking, and virtualization of storage. You have a natural integration, and you don't have the problem of integrating it with different products or providers. Sometimes, different companies have good integration, but it is not always guaranteed. For example, many years ago, Cisco and VMware were good partners in networking, but when VMware started to sell ESX, the relationship was broken. This is the problem that you can face when you are using solutions from two different companies."
"The observability platform and end-to-end service portal provided by Tanzu are the most valuable features."
"I have multiple Kubernetes environments within my environment. TMC gives me a single pane view, which is good for managing everything."
 

Cons

"In the next release, I would like to see easy integration with external tools."
"The user interface should be simpler to navigate because it t can take time for users to learn it."
"Pivotal Cloud Foundry could improve the documentation. They are good, but they could improve more. Additionally, it would be beneficial if there were more use case examples."
"It should offer more security features."
"Pivotal Cloud Foundry is not scalable, infinitely, because when you install it on a set of virtual machines it is very hard to scale. It's easy to scale on an application level, but not it is not similar to if you were using Amazon. Amazon you can scale thousands of applications."
"Something that can be done better is canary deployment. So, right now, we're using blue-green deployment. The support for canary deployment would be nice."
"It is not straightforward to setup."
"The Pivotal Cloud Foundry's initial setup has a learning curve for my team, but it was easy to use."
"The implementation is not easy, it is very complex and can take a day or two to complete."
"Tanzu could provide more granular control over whatever networking is being done on the containers. I would also like to see a slightly more detailed view of application-level tracing. I'm referring to the connections between different microservices. If they added a service-matching feature, that would be helpful for the customers to build or be more effective."
"I would like to see additional support for things outside of Cloud Foundry."
"The product should support integration with Google Cloud Platform (GCP)"
"The solution's initial setup process was complex...The solution could benefit from improved customization and visibility for its users."
"Addressing the high upfront costs could improve the product. Implementing a subscription-based model with tiered service options could make it more accessible to a broader range of customers."
"It is not easy to build a solution with containers. It has a graphical user interface, but you need to have a lot of knowledge of Linux and how to work in the command mode. Its support can also be improved. Currently, its biggest disadvantage is that it is a new product, and the clients prefer to go for a solution that has been in the market for a long time. There are not that many people who know this product."
"Another area of improvement is pricing."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Licensing is on a monthly basis and right now we pay $24/month. There are no other costs over and above that."
"The price of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is based on the customer's requirements. However, the price is comparable to other similar solutions."
"The pricing is on the higher side and there are cheaper options available."
"We do pay for the licensing cost because we have opted for a private cloud setup. So, it is a cloud setup, and we have to make payments based on the cloud size. I do not consider it very costly when comparing it to the market."
"You're paying for the number of virtual machines you want to install in the installation."
"The price of Pivotal Cloud Foundry could improve. However, in this category of solutions, they are all expensive."
"The licensing cost is expensive."
"The solution is only for large or medium size enterprises because it is expensive."
"It is not the most expensive option, and I believe the capabilities align well with the value it provides."
"The solution is bundled in with Cloud Foundry so the pricing is not independent."
"There are different licenses available. You have to upgrade your license if you want to scale the solution more."
"The product is not expensive, but it is not cheap."
"The license for VMware Tanzu Application Service is expensive. The license should be cheaper."
"I would recommend that businesses look into the full price for their requirements. The price is high, but there are some open-source add-ons that can be used for customization while keeping costs down, although these might not be suitable for everyone."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which PaaS Clouds solutions are best for your needs.
816,636 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
39%
Manufacturing Company
21%
Insurance Company
6%
Computer Software Company
5%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Which would you recommend - Pivotal Cloud Foundry or OpenShift?
Pivotal Cloud Foundry is a cloud-native application platform to simplify app delivery. It is efficient and effective. The best feature is how easy it is to handle external services such as database...
What do you like most about Pivotal Cloud Foundry?
I find the ease of deployment and management of microservices to be the most valuable features. The platform also has good auto-scaling capabilities.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pivotal Cloud Foundry?
I would say it is around a nine out of ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive. Just short of Oracle. It's sort of Oracle cloud.
Which is better - OpenShift Container Platform or VMware Tanzu Mission Control?
Red Hat Openshift is ideal for organizations using microservices and cloud environments. I like that the platform is auto-scalable, which saves overhead time for developers. I think Openshift can b...
What do you like most about VMware Tanzu Application Service?
The solution is integrated very well with a lot of other systems. Also, its GUI is very good.
 

Also Known As

PCF, Pivotal Application Service (PAS), Pivotal Container Service (PKS), Pivotal Function Service (PFS)
Tanzu Application Catalog, Application Platform, Application Service, Hub, Mission Control, Service Mesh, Build Service, Concourse for VMware Tanzu
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Humana, Citibank, Mercedes Benz, Liberty Mutual, The Home Depot, GE, West Corp, Merrill Corporation, CoreLogic, Orange, Dish Network, Comcast, Bloomberg, Internal Revenue Service, Ford Motor Company, Garmin, Volkswagen, Solera, Allstate, US Air Force, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, ScotiaBank
Verizon, Cerner, Zipcar, Avarteq
Find out what your peers are saying about Pivotal Cloud Foundry vs. VMware Tanzu Platform and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.
816,636 professionals have used our research since 2012.