VMware Cloud-Native Apps released their first open-source projects with the announcement and release of project Lightwave and Photon. This is a new step in the path forward for VMware. VMware has always been closed source and supportive of other open-source projects, but this is the first time that VMware is taking the lead and released code through open-source for it’s own projects.
A new step and it suits the approach of making “developers first class citizens of the datacenter”. I’ve been working with VMware products for some years now and have seen this trend slowly building up. Their is a shift happening. No longer are applications the turf that only belongs to developers and nor is IT infrastructure the turf that only belongs to the IT operations guys. Call it evolution, call it “DevOps”, but more and more organisations see the benefit of making applications and IT operations work closely together to get the best out of both worlds : a platform that can run any applications; legacy or cloud-native.
In my opinion it is a good move for VMware to follow this trend and to transform itself from an IT infrastructure company into a company that acknowledges the needs of both the developers and the IT ops guys. VMware is one of the thought leaders in the space of virtualization and cloud computing and has experience of introducing complex software concepts into enterprise environments. Server virtualization was the start, with Software-Defined Data Center being the vision that build on the advantages that virtualization provides.
VMware Cloud-Native Apps is a new era. A new step forward in the continuing to support the application evolution into the cloud. And in my opinion its was only natural to choose the path of open-source. If you want to treat developers as “first class citizens”, you need to make them part of the VMware application development lifecycle.
This is that start of more things to come. I hope we’ll see more projects targeted at the next generation of applications with lost of community involvement and the opportunity to be part of something great. VMware ❤️ Developers!
For more information on project Photon & Lightwave got to http://vmware.github.io/