Originally reported by Information Age, November 2019.
Overview: A Three-Way Partnership for Enterprise DevOps
In November 2019, CloudBees announced a strategic partnership with Atos and VMware aimed at helping enterprise organisations adopt DevOps best practices at scale. The combined offering was delivered through Atos Digital Hybrid Cloud (DHC), powered by VMware Tanzu (formerly VMware Enterprise PKS) and the CloudBees cloud-native CI/CD platform.
The partnership was positioned as an industry first — combining a large global managed service provider (Atos), a leading cloud infrastructure platform (VMware), and an enterprise CI/CD specialist (CloudBees) into a single, integrated managed service for software delivery.
What Problem Does This Partnership Solve?
Many enterprises undergoing digital transformation struggle with the same core challenges:
- Building and maintaining CI/CD pipelines requires significant internal investment and specialist skills.
- Adopting DevOps culture and tooling while keeping existing traditional applications running is complex.
- Scaling software delivery across large engineering organisations — with diverse application portfolios, from monoliths to microservices — introduces operational overhead.
- Managing Kubernetes infrastructure at enterprise scale demands dedicated platform engineering expertise.
The Atos DHC managed service, powered by CloudBees and VMware, was designed to offload much of this complexity to a trusted managed service provider, allowing development teams to focus on delivering software rather than maintaining delivery infrastructure.
What Each Partner Brings to the Table
Each of the three partners contributed distinct capabilities to the combined offering:
CloudBees Core
CloudBees Core (now part of the broader CloudBees CI product family) provided a centrally managed, shared CI/CD service with self-service capabilities for individual engineering teams. Key characteristics included:
- Enterprise-grade Jenkins-based CI/CD pipelines with centralised governance.
- Self-service project provisioning so teams could onboard without waiting for platform administrators.
- Cloud-native platform support for VMware PKS (Kubernetes).
Atos Application Transformation Services
Atos contributed managed services expertise and its Digital Hybrid Cloud platform, which provided:
- Application modernisation consulting and delivery — helping teams move from traditional deployment models to cloud-native approaches.
- Managed operations for the combined platform, reducing the internal engineering burden on customer organisations.
- A trusted global service provider relationship for enterprises that need contractual SLAs and support at scale.
VMware Enterprise PKS (Now VMware Tanzu)
VMware Enterprise PKS provided the Kubernetes infrastructure layer underpinning the platform. Key features included:
- Kubernetes-as-a-service with high availability and cluster scaling.
- Automated health checks and self-healing cluster management.
- Rolling upgrades to reduce downtime during platform maintenance.
- A turnkey solution designed for enterprise operational requirements rather than DIY Kubernetes setups.
Key Quotes from the Announcement
Francois Dechery, Chief Strategy Officer, CloudBees:
“As forward-looking organisations continue to focus on digital transformation initiatives, they are increasingly seeking assistance from trusted service providers for the management of their DevOps operations. This partnership represents a true industry first. By combining the power of a large managed service provider and a leading global cloud provider with our CI/CD solution, we’re helping customers to more effectively and efficiently modernise.”
Michael Kollar, Senior Vice President for Cloud Engineering, Atos:
“Using our Atos Digital Hybrid Cloud, powered by CloudBees, organisations can harness the power of DevOps, to transform application development methods from a traditional approach to a model that leverages the efficiencies of the cloud and the convenience of a managed service.”
Susan Nash, Senior Vice President, Business Development, VMware:
“DevOps is an important new way to develop applications. As it becomes more pervasive, many companies are struggling to try to adopt the DevOps culture, along with automating core software delivery processes. Working together, we are able to deliver a fully-managed software delivery solution that will enable companies to develop and deliver software faster, with less overhead and with far less friction.”
Why This Partnership Mattered for DevOps Teams
The significance of this announcement in 2019 was primarily about reducing the barrier to enterprise-scale DevOps adoption. Rather than requiring organisations to independently integrate CI/CD tooling, Kubernetes infrastructure, and application modernisation services, the three-way partnership offered a pre-integrated, managed stack.
For DevOps engineers and platform teams evaluating such offerings, the practical value lay in:
- Reduced integration risk: CloudBees CI/CD was already validated against VMware PKS, removing a significant compatibility testing burden.
- Managed operations: Atos provided operational management of the platform, which is particularly valuable for enterprises without large internal platform engineering teams.
- Support for heterogeneous application portfolios: The stack was explicitly designed to support both traditional applications and modern microservice-based architectures in the same delivery pipeline.
- Enterprise contractual guarantees: A managed service model with a major global system integrator (Atos) provides procurement and compliance pathways that pure SaaS or DIY solutions often lack.
Context: The Broader Market Shift
This partnership reflected a broader industry trend in 2019 and 2020: the convergence of CI/CD platforms, Kubernetes infrastructure, and managed service providers into integrated DevOps offerings. Enterprises were increasingly looking to reduce the operational complexity of maintaining their own DevOps toolchains, driving demand for fully managed, opinionated stacks built on proven components.
VMware’s subsequent rebranding of PKS to VMware Tanzu and its broader Tanzu portfolio expansion also reflected this shift, positioning VMware as a platform for enterprise Kubernetes management rather than just a virtualisation vendor.
For teams evaluating modern DevOps platform strategies, this type of partnership model — integrating CI/CD, Kubernetes, and managed operations — remains highly relevant as organisations balance build-versus-buy decisions for their delivery infrastructure.