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Harness vs VMware Tanzu Platform comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 15, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

Harness
Ranking in Build Automation
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (18th), Cloud Cost Management (8th)
VMware Tanzu Platform
Ranking in Build Automation
13th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
PaaS Clouds (11th), Cloud Management (22nd), Development Platforms (3rd), Container Management (3rd), Service Mesh (8th), Agile and DevOps Services (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Build Automation category, the mindshare of Harness is 6.9%, up from 4.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Tanzu Platform is 1.5%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Build Automation Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Harness6.9%
VMware Tanzu Platform1.5%
Other91.6%
Build Automation
 

Featured Reviews

Linwei Yuan - PeerSpot reviewer
Streamline microservices deployment with integrated execution pipelines and comprehensive monitoring
Harness integrates all functions like execution pipelines, environment checks, and log monitoring in one place. It is very convenient since we have many microservices, so having one platform for all of them is beneficial. The dashboard allows me to monitor all core services' deployment status in one place, making it easier to find bugs and check logs.
ErmiasGirma - PeerSpot reviewer
Has supported container-based deployments and improved infrastructure visibility through monitoring tools
Aria Operations, formerly known as VMware vRealize Operations, has been renamed to vROps. We are currently using this for monitoring purposes. For orchestration, we are using VCD to automate Telco Cloud. VCD is an automation tool, and we are also using VMware Tanzu Platform for the Kubernetes environment, alongside TKG, Tanzu Kubernetes Grid. These are also other solutions for the Tanzu Kubernetes environment. For Telco Cloud, we are using it to automate our company's operations, which is for a telecom company. We are familiar with these products, especially vCenter, ESXi, VCD, vCF, and vROps. It is very easy to integrate applications when we deploy vCenter and ESXi since we can enable vSphere with Tanzu feature. We can build namespaces and provide application developers the platform to deploy their applications on pods within containerization. We can easily manage, pull results, and create containers efficiently, making it a simple way to handle applications. We provide namespace labels for application developers, and we can manage their resources along with other aspects easily. Regarding security, we use many tools such as CDX and LDAP, AD for integrating our Kubernetes cluster with the developer teams. We can manage roles and permissions simply. It is very straightforward to integrate with EDX and other third-party tools, Active Directory, to the Kubernetes cluster, allowing easy access and management.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Harness starts integrating with organizations, making everything automated without the need for manual interruption."
"Harness integrates all functions like execution pipelines, environment checks, and log monitoring in one place, making it convenient."
"Everything in Harness is configured and runs smoothly."
"It's a highly customizable DevOps tool."
"Harness integrates all functions like execution pipelines, environment checks, and log monitoring in one place."
"The features of Harness are valuable, supporting rolling deployments, basic deployments, and blue-green deployments with zero downtime."
"Tanzu Mission Control has quite a set of rich features when compared to OpenShift."
"The most important thing about the solution is its flexibility."
"The most valuable feature of VMware Tanzu Mission Control is the management functionality of the cluster life cycle. Additionally, the solution integrates well with other vendors, such as Velero for backups and Sonobuoy for compliance. Additionally, it works well in multi-cluster environments."
"A feature we find valuable is that other products can also be integrated with Mission Control. This means that we can see the status of specific clusters, as well as view the monitoring application logs all from one point."
"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 multi-tenancy with the VCD is great."
"We feel very good about these features."
"The Day 2 operations support is the most vital feature"
 

Cons

"Harness setup and configurations could be made easier to configure, which would be helpful."
"I prefer the previous less compact UI version of Harness, which showed more details on the screen."
"When deploying multiple components to multiple environments, like production and BCP, failures sometimes occur. Improvements are needed when deploying one component to one environment."
"When integrating Harness with more than twenty applications in one place, it becomes less stable, causing improvements to be necessary."
"There's also room for improvement in debugging pipeline issues, which can sometimes become complex."
"Even with automation, there's a requirement for manual change requests for approvals."
"The product should support integration with Google Cloud Platform (GCP)"
"The network control and security policies must be improved."
"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."
"LYNX is a managed cluster solution that takes care of specific details within a cluster, such as sequences or services. I haven't seen this feature in Tanzu Mission Control."
"This product doesn't have a GUI. In order to use it properly, I need to connect it to a new GUI or build a GUI to manage it — it's pretty difficult."
"One potential area for expansion would be leveraging AI capabilities, which my customer might be interested in exploring as they grow."
"The solution could improve by having better integration with other solutions such as HPE."
"The solution's initial setup process was complex...The solution could benefit from improved customization and visibility for its users."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The license for VMware Tanzu Application Service is expensive. The license should be cheaper."
"There are different licenses available. You have to upgrade your license if you want to scale the solution more."
"The solution is bundled in with Cloud Foundry so the pricing is not independent."
"The licensing cost is expensive."
"The product is not expensive, but it is not cheap."
"Since we were at a large data center, the price might not have been a concern for us."
"The least expensive licensing cost for VMware is around $350 per core."
"The solution is only for large or medium size enterprises because it is expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
30%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise10
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Harness?
It's a highly customizable DevOps tool.
What needs improvement with Harness?
Harness setup and configurations could be made easier to configure, which would be helpful.
What is your primary use case for Harness?
In Harness, we are basically using Canary type deployments. We have applications, web applications, and web servers. Whenever we get the WAR file with 50 servers in a load balancer, Harness will de...
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 Mission Control?
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 ap...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VMware Tanzu Mission Control?
The price of VMware Tanzu Mission Control is greater than that of Red Hat's competitor solution. I would rate the pricing of VMware Tanzu Mission Control as four out of ten.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Armory
Tanzu Application Catalog, Application Platform, Application Service, Hub, Mission Control, Service Mesh, Build Service, Concourse for VMware Tanzu
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Linedata, Openbank, Home Depot, Advanced
Verizon, Cerner, Zipcar, Avarteq
Find out what your peers are saying about Harness vs. VMware Tanzu Platform and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
872,778 professionals have used our research since 2012.