PCF

PCF is an acronym that can refer to several terms in technology and other fields. The most widely known usage in cloud computing is Pivotal Cloud Foundry (PCF), a cloud-native platform-as-a-service (PaaS) for building, deploying, and operating applications at scale.

PCF provides a run-time environment built on the Cloud Foundry open-source project. It allows developers to push applications with the CF push workflow, supporting multiple languages and frameworks. The platform handles application orchestration, service provisioning, and routing through components such as Diego for scheduling, BOSH for deployment and lifecycle management, and a router for traffic routing. It includes a service broker API for binding external services (databases, messaging, etc.) to applications and uses a security component for identity and access control. It can be deployed on private data centers or major public clouds and integrates with common IaaS backends (VMware vSphere, AWS, Azure, Google Cloud). PCF emphasizes automation, scalability, multi-tenant isolation, and compliance with cloud-native patterns such as continuous delivery and automated rollouts.

In VMware's Tanzu product line, PCF evolved from Pivotal Cloud Foundry and has been referred to as Tanzu Application Service in some releases, reflecting the broader rebranding of Pivotal's technologies under the Tanzu umbrella.

Other uses of the PCF acronym exist in different fields, depending on the context; this article focuses on the cloud platform usage.