There are 6 million Java developers out there and Salesforce.com wants to get them on board its Force.com development platform. That's part of the rationale behind a new joint venture with VMware – VMforce.
VMforce is a new joint platform - positioned by the two firms as an “enterprise Java Cloud” - which brings together VMware’s vCloud application management technology with Saleforce’s Force.com platform which includes database, collaboration, workflow, search and analytics functions.
“Enterprise Java developers, welcome to Cloud 2," said Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff. "This fundamental shift incorporates cloud computing, real-time collaboration and mobile devices like the iPad to meet the new needs of the enterprise.”
VMware CEO Paul Maritz said the new platform would make application development simpler. “VMforce is a significant step forward in offering our customers a path that bridges existing internal investments with the resources and flexibility of the Cloud,” he said.
VMforce is due to be available in a developer preview in the second half of 2010, with general availability anticipated either later this year or in 2011. Pricing has yet to be announced.
VMforce will be deployed on top of Force.com and use VMware's Spring Framework for enterprise application development. The SpringSource Tool Suite will provide Eclipse-based tools.
Applications on VMforce will run on the SpringSource tc Server runtime, which is VMware's Apache Tomcat-based application server optimised for virtual and Cloud environments. VMware vCloud virtualisation will manage the Java stack and on-ramping applications onto the cloud as well as the underlying vSphere virtualization platform. The VMware vCloud App Core will manage the VMware vSphere layer and application runtime layer, including the Spring framework and tc Server.
To date developers on Force.com have had to use Salesforce.com's proprietary Apex language. Vmforce potentially opens the platform up to the six million or so Java developers and two million SpringSource developers.
In a blog posting, Parker Harris, co-founder and CTO at Salesforce.com cited a drive towards simplicity at the roots of the new offering. “This partnership was born because VMware and Salesforce.com share many of the same ideals. We both believe in simplifying IT. It just should not be that hard,” he noted. “Many smart people have taken existing tools and tried to deliver simple and effective solutions quickly. And often they failed. But it is not their fault.The culpability lies at the core of the technologies being leveraged.
“Salesforce.com saw this when we entered the CRM market over a decade ago. The technology being used simply did not solve that problem in a simple way. The complexities of customisation, tuning, hosting, etc. forced IT to focus on the technology itself and not the business problem that needed to be solved. And often that focus became so intense on technology for technology's sake that engineers lost sight of the original problem. No one benefited in the end except the vendors.
“The open world of enterprise Java computing has been equally plagued by complexity,” he added. “VMforce moves us all toward a more open world, where we combine our unique strengths with the exceptional capabilities of others to benefit everyone: our customers, developers, the industry at large...With VMforce, both salesforce.com and VMware are committed to bringing our technologies to the open cloud community. Not only will Force.com services be easily and openly consumable by VMforce and vice-versa, but they will also be open and consumable by all Clouds.”
The joint venture is clearly a competitive strike against Micrsoft's Cloud platform ambitions. “VMForce could be a pretty big deal,” commented James Governor of research house Redmonk. “The question who "owns" Java is beginning to look like a three horse race between Oracle, VMware and Google. For Java-centric enterprises that want hybrid clouds - VMForce is bound to be attractive.
“Salesforce.com has done well with ISVs, but very few enterprises want to develop in a "Java-like" language... They want to develop in Java,” he added. “VMForce is the only PaaS stack that will supports JEE services, and more importantly the Spring API set, which is the de facto standard for a re-factored enterprise Java.”
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