Pivotal is looking to give developers more tools and resources to address their needs when it comes to developing cloud-native applications. This includes additional focus on serverless computing, as well as containers.

With the release of its Pivotal Cloud Foundry (PCF) 2.0 platform, the company is also adding an application marketplace, where developers can download tools and services from a number of different partners, including GitHub, Splunk Inc. , New Relic, Apigee Corp. and IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM).

Pivotal is demonstrating previews of the platform at its SpringOne Platform conference in San Francisco, which kicked off on Tuesday.

Figure 1: Pivotal sees the cloud everywhere
(Source: Pixabay)

With its release, PCF 2.0 focuses on developer needs as they are creating new applications that run in the cloud. As the company stated in a blog post:

The first part of the release is what the company calls Pivotal Function Service, which addresses issues with serverless computing. Within serverless, the software automatically manages resources -- memory, storage and virtual machines -- and spins up those resources as needed, as well as winds them down depending on the demand. The advantage here is that the technology allows developers to focus on application behavior. (See Serverless Computing: Why You Should Wait.)

In the case of Pivotal, the platform allows developers to trigger activity based on data sent by users or messaging systems such as RabbitMQ or Apache Kafka. The company is showing demonstrations of its serverless feature this week, with a full release coming in six months.

On the container side, Pivotal is expanding support for the open source Kubernetes container orchestration platform, which then lets developers run that service either within a private data center or in a public cloud.

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This part of the platform was co-developed with VMware Inc. (NYSE: VMW) and Google (Nasdaq: GOOG). It provides a number of features, including compatibility with Google Container Engine, instant provisioning, high availability, network management and security, as well as access to the Google Cloud Platform.

It should be noted that while Pivotal acts as an independent company, it's now part of Dell Technologies (Nasdaq: DELL), which also includes VMware. (See VMware's Cloud Fortunes Continue in Q3.)

Finally, the new application marketplace is a showcase for the various partnerships that Pivotal has been developing. This includes joint development with IBM around cloud-native designs and microservices.

In addition, Pivotal and Microsoft are testing a beta of PCF running in the Azure Stack, which is that company's on-premises version of its public cloud platform. Earlier this year, Pivotal announced support for Windows and .NET applications. (See Pivotal Opens Windows to Its Cloud Platform.)

Finally, Pivotal is also supporting Virtustream's managed services, and a version of PCF can now run on the Virtustream Inc. Enterprise Cloud.

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— Scott Ferguson, Editor, Enterprise Cloud News. Follow him on Twitter @sferguson_LR.