News Analysis: Salesforce.com and VMware Up The Ante In The Cloud Wars With VMforce

By on April 29, 2010

VMWare and Salesforce.com Battle For The Hearts And Minds Of Cloud-Oriented Java Developers

On April 27th, 2010, Salesforce.com, [NYSE: CRM] and VMware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW) formed VMforce, a strategic alliance to create a deployment environment for Java based apps in the cloud.  The Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) offering builds on Java, Spring, VMware vSphere, and Force.com.  Key themes in this announcement:

  • Growing the developer ecosystem. VMware and Salesforce.com realize that the key to growth will be their appeal to developers.  The VMforce offering courts 6 million enterprise Java developers and over 2 million using SpringSource’s Spring framework with an opportunity to build Cloud 2 applications.  VMware brings application management and orchestration tools via VMware vSphere.  Salesforce.com opens up its applications, Force.com database, Chatter collaboration, search, workflow, analytics and mobile platforms.

    Point of View (POV):     By betting on Java and the Spring framework for this Cloud2 PaaS, both vendors gain immediate access to one of the largest developer communities in the world.  Salesforce.com developers no longer have to use the highly flexible, but very proprietary APEX code base to create Cloud2 apps.   Java developers can now reach the large base of Salesforce.com customers and use the Salesforce.com apps and Force.com.
  • Creating cloud efficiencies for Java development. VMforce brings global infrastructure, virtualization platform, orchestration and management technology, relational cloud database, development platform and collaboration services, application run time, development framework, and tooling to the cloud.  Organizations can build code in Java and integrate with apps in Salesforce.com without having to retrain existing resources.  Environments can scale as needed and take advantage of the massive economies of scale in the cloud.

    POV:     As with all PaaS offerings, cost and time savings include not dealing with hardware procurement, pesky systems management software, configuration and tuning, and multiple dev, test, and production environment set up.  Developers can focus on business value not infrastructure.  What will they do with their free time not scaling up databases and app servers?

Figure 1. Major Players In The Cloud Wars

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R “Ray” Wang (pronounced WAHNG) is the Principal Analyst, Founder, and Chairman of Silicon Valley based Constellation Research, Inc. He’s the author of the popular business strategy and technology blog “A Software Insider’s Point of View”. Wang has held executive roles in product, marketing, strategy, and consulting at institutions such as Forrester Research, Oracle, PeopleSoft, Deloitte, Ernst & Young, and Johns Hopkins Hospital. His best selling book, Disrupting Digital Business, published by Harvard Business Review Press provides insights on why 52% of the Fortune 500 have been merged, acquired, gone bankrupt, or fallen off the list since 2000. Wang is a prominent dynamic keynote speaker, research analyst, and industry commentator working with clients to transform their business models using exponential technologies. He’s spoken around the world at almost every tech related conference including keynotes for tens of thousands of people and intimate executive settings such as Davos. Ray’s clients include a majority of the Fortune 500 and Global 200. Ray is well quoted in media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, FoxBusiness, CNBC, Bloomberg, CNN, CGTN, Tech Crunch, Business Week, and Fortune. He has thrice won the prestigious Institute of Industry Analyst Relations (IIAR) Analyst of the Year Award and has repeatedly been in the #1 slot in the AR Power 100 list for over 10 years. Ray resides in Silicon Valley when not traveling 500,000 miles a year in the air.

One response to “News Analysis: Salesforce.com and VMware Up The Ante In The Cloud Wars With VMforce”

  1. Roger Jennings
    Roger Jennings April 29, 2010 at 7:58 am |

    Ray,

    Windows Azure supports Java, PHP and Ruby, in addition to .NET.

    Cheers,

    –rj