Cloud Foundry has been a cornerstone of modern application platforms for more than a decade. It’s known for its developer-friendly workflows, flexibility, and support for enterprise-scale workloads, and remains a trusted choice for organizations seeking to streamline their application delivery.
What is a Cloud Foundry distribution?
A Cloud Foundry distribution is a packaged, maintained version of the open-source Cloud Foundry project. Since Cloud Foundry is developed and maintained by an open-source community under the Cloud Foundry Foundation, distributions are how enterprises gain access to a production-ready platform without having to piece everything together themselves.
Think of it like this: the open-source project is the raw framework, while a Cloud Foundry distribution is the tailored, supported implementation that organizations can actually run in production as an internal developer platform.
Why use a Cloud Foundry distribution?
Here are the main reasons enterprises choose a distribution rather than building Cloud Foundry from scratch:
1. Faster time to value
Distributions come pre-integrated with the essential components like buildpacks, routing, logging, monitoring, and lifecycle automation so that you don’t have to assemble and maintain them all yourself.
2. Enterprise support
Vendors behind distributions typically offer enterprise-grade support, SLAs, and ongoing updates, ensuring your platform stays secure and stable.
3. Customizations for specific infrastructures
Some distributions are designed to run seamlessly across specific environments (e.g., VMware, Kubernetes, or multi-cloud scenarios). This allows teams to focus on building applications rather than worrying about the underlying infrastructure.
4. Operational efficiency
Distributions provide tooling and automation for day-2 operations like scaling, patching, and monitoring, thereby reducing the operational burden on platform teams.
a9s Cloud Foundry, a Cloud Foundry distribution
Over the years, several Cloud Foundry distributions have emerged, each with its own focus and features:
anynines’ a9s Cloud Foundry is an enterprise-grade distribution designed for flexibility and available on multiple infrastructures, with strong support for integrated data services.
CF distributions build on the same open-source Cloud Foundry core, but offer unique integrations, pricing, support models, and operational tooling.
How to choose the right Cloud Foundry distribution
When evaluating which Cloud Foundry distribution fits your needs, consider the following:
- Infrastructure compatibility – Does it support your cloud provider(s) or on-premises environment?
- Support and SLAs – What level of vendor backing will you get?
- Data services – Does it integrate with managed databases and data services like messaging systems or caching services out of the box?
- Roadmap alignment – Is the vendor actively evolving the platform with Kubernetes-native integrations?
Conclusion
A Cloud Foundry distribution provides enterprises with a reliable, supported way to run Cloud Foundry in production. By delivering a complete, integrated platform, distributions save time, reduce operational complexity, and enable developers to focus on what they do best: building and deploying applications.
Whether you’re evaluating a9s Cloud Foundry or other vendor offerings, the right distribution can help you access the full potential of your organization’s application platform.
