What Broadcom Did to the Tanzu Portfolio
VMware's Tanzu portfolio was, prior to the Broadcom acquisition, one of the most ambitious Kubernetes enterprise product families in the market. It spanned Tanzu Kubernetes Grid (TKG) for cluster provisioning, Tanzu Mission Control (TMC) for multi-cloud Kubernetes management, Tanzu Application Platform (TAP) for developer experience, and Tanzu Application Service (TAS) — the CloudFoundry-based application platform that many enterprises had been running for years.
Broadcom's rationalisation has been significant. The product names have changed in some cases. Several components have been discontinued or folded into VCF. Others have been repositioned as add-on products requiring licensing above and beyond the base VCF subscription. Understanding what's in scope for your current Tanzu usage — and where licensing gaps may have appeared — is the first step in any Tanzu renewal conversation.
What's Included in VCF and What Isn't
The Tanzu components included in VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) are narrower than many organisations expect:
| Tanzu Component | Included in VCF? | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Tanzu Kubernetes Grid (TKG) | ✓ Included | Basic Kubernetes provisioning on vSphere infrastructure |
| vSphere with Tanzu (Supervisor) | ✓ Included | Kubernetes supervisor cluster embedded in vSphere |
| Tanzu Mission Control (TMC) | ✗ Add-on | Multi-cloud cluster management — separate subscription required |
| Tanzu Application Platform (TAP) | ✗ Add-on | Developer experience platform — separate subscription required |
| Tanzu Application Service (TAS) | ✗ Add-on | CloudFoundry-based PaaS — separate subscription, pricing revised |
| Tanzu Service Mesh | ✗ Add-on | Istio-based service mesh — separate subscription |
The gap organisations miss: Many enterprises running Tanzu Mission Control or Tanzu Application Platform assume these are covered by their VCF subscription. They are not. Broadcom has repositioned these as premium add-ons. Organisations discovering this at renewal face unbudgeted costs that can run into hundreds of thousands of pounds annually.
Tanzu Add-On Pricing Under Broadcom
Broadcom has not published standardised list pricing for all Tanzu add-on products in a transparent manner. Pricing is typically provided on a per-cluster or per-vCPU basis through VPP partners. The following ranges are representative of what enterprise clients are receiving in proposals:
- Tanzu Mission Control: £40–80 per managed cluster per month, or enterprise pricing by negotiation for large multi-cloud estates
- Tanzu Application Platform: £80–160 per developer seat per month depending on tier (Standard vs Advanced)
- Tanzu Application Service: Per-VM or per-AI pricing depending on prior TAS contracts — highly variable and worth scrutinising closely
These prices are starting points. Like VCF itself, Tanzu add-on pricing responds to leverage — primarily the credibility of open-source or competitive alternatives.
Kubernetes Alternatives Worth Evaluating
The Kubernetes ecosystem has matured considerably. Several commercial and open-source alternatives now provide enterprise-grade capabilities that justify a formal evaluation before accepting Broadcom's Tanzu add-on pricing:
Red Hat OpenShift
OpenShift is the most widely deployed commercial Kubernetes platform outside of VMware's ecosystem. It provides a full developer and operations platform — security hardening, developer tooling, application lifecycle management, and multi-cluster federation — on a subscription basis. OpenShift pricing is typically per-core on the infrastructure it runs on. For enterprises already running Red Hat Enterprise Linux, OpenShift often unlocks bundled discounts that materially change the comparison.
Rancher by SUSE
Rancher is the strongest open-source-rooted Kubernetes management platform with commercial support available. SUSE acquired Rancher in 2020 and has continued developing both the open-source distribution and the commercial Prime support offering. For organisations comfortable with SUSE's support model, Rancher provides TAP-equivalent multi-cluster management capabilities at a significantly lower price point than Tanzu Mission Control.
Cloud Provider Managed Kubernetes
AWS EKS, Azure AKS, and Google GKE all provide managed Kubernetes with enterprise support agreements. For workloads with a clear cloud trajectory, managed Kubernetes eliminates the infrastructure management overhead entirely. The cost comparison against Tanzu depends heavily on your current on-premises infrastructure economics and data sovereignty requirements.
Upstream Kubernetes + Open Source Tooling
Organisations with strong platform engineering teams are increasingly running upstream Kubernetes with open-source tooling: ArgoCD for GitOps, Istio for service mesh, Prometheus/Grafana for observability, and HashiCorp Vault for secrets management. This approach requires significant internal capability but can reduce Kubernetes platform costs to near-zero in licence terms, with operational cost the primary variable.
Negotiating Tanzu Add-On Pricing
Tanzu add-on products are negotiable, particularly when integrated into a broader VCF renewal conversation. The key principles:
- Bundle Tanzu add-ons into the VCF renewal negotiation — separate negotiations lose the packaging leverage
- Present a documented OpenShift or Rancher evaluation with scoped pricing before Broadcom's first commercial proposal
- Use TMC cluster count optimisation — many organisations over-count managed clusters relative to actual active clusters
- For TAP, evaluate the developer seat count carefully — Broadcom's seat definitions can be broader than your active developer base
- TAS customers should scrutinise the migration path to TAP — Broadcom's preferred path may not be the most cost-effective for your workloads
- Multi-year Tanzu commitments (aligned with VCF term) typically unlock 15–25% additional discounts
The bigger picture: Tanzu add-on costs are typically a secondary concern compared to the VCF base subscription increase. However, for organisations running large TAP or TAS deployments, add-on costs can rival the VCF base — making the combined platform cost comparison against OpenShift genuinely competitive. Run the full comparison before signing anything.