pivotal

Pivotal is an English adjective meaning of crucial or central importance, often used to describe things that play a decisive role in a process or outcome. In business and technology, the term has also been used as a brand name for a software company and its products.

Pivotal Software, Inc. was formed in 2013 as a joint venture between EMC Corporation and VMware, with early involvement from Pivotal Labs. The company focused on helping enterprises build and run modern software applications, particularly in cloud environments. Its key offerings included Pivotal Cloud Foundry (PCF), a cloud-native platform based on the Cloud Foundry project, along with Pivotal Application Service. It also offered container-related technologies such as Pivotal Kubernetes Service, and maintained Pivotal Tracker, an agile project management tool, plus the consulting arm Pivotal Labs.

In 2019, VMware announced an agreement to acquire Pivotal Software for about $2.7 billion. The acquisition was completed, and Pivotal became part of VMware, with its platform technology integrated into VMware’s Tanzu portfolio for building, running, and managing modern applications across clouds. The Pivotal brand and its products were gradually folded into Tanzu, with PCF evolving into Tanzu Application Platform and PKS transitioning to what became Tanzu Kubernetes Grid.

See also: Cloud Foundry, VMware Tanzu, agile software development, Pivotal Tracker, Pivotal Labs.