Continuing their push integrating Java and cloud technologies, SpringSource today announced the acquisition of CloudFoundry and its release as the SpringSource Cloud Foundry. From the press release:
[SpringSource Cloud Foundry] is a new Enterprise Java Cloud offering that enables developers to deploy and manage Spring, Grails and Java applications within a public cloud environment ... Cloud Foundry is based on SpringSource’s recent acquisition of Cloud Foundry, Inc., an Oakland, Calif. - based software company. SpringSource Cloud Foundry is built on the innovative open-source Cloud Tools project and extends SpringSource’s solutions for building, deploying and managing Java applications to take full advantage of the power of elastic cloud computing. Cloud Foundry, now incorporated into SpringSource’s product line, launches and automatically scales Java web applications in the cloud with a few clicks of the mouse......Benefitting From SpringSource’s Solutions The new SpringSource Cloud Foundry offering leverages the strength of proven SpringSource technologies that accelerate the entire build, run and manage Java application lifecycle. SpringSource’s lean approach to software is ideal for creating applications ultimately deployed in the cloud. More than two million developers rely on Spring, the de facto standard programming model for enterprise Java applications. SpringSource’s tc Server, based on Apache Tomcat, the most popular application server with 68 percent usage across IT organizations, provides a lightweight container ideally suited for deploying Java web applications in the cloud. Within the next 90 days, the freely available SpringSource Tool Suite will offer direct deployment of Java applications—through Cloud Foundry—into the public cloud.
Hyperic CloudStatus, the first service to provide an independent view of the health and performance of public clouds, provides SpringSource Cloud Foundry with cloud health monitoring data. In addition, SpringSource Cloud Foundry users receive Hyperic HQ-powered functionality to provide deep and transparent insight into application performance and service levels. Hyperic HQ integrates closely with Cloud Foundry’s technology to automatically scale cloud deployments based on an acute understanding of how the applications are working and interacting with other IT resources...
The Cloud Foundry acquisition comes a week after VMware agreed to buy SpringSource itself. InfoQ sat down with SpringSource CEO Rod Johnson, Javier Soltero Vice President - Management Products, and Chris Richardson Cloud Foundry Creator to discuss the recent events.
Soltero and Richardson first gave a brief overview of CloudFoundry. They noted the it can best be described as an orchestration that takes a Java web application, preps it for the cloud (at present EC2), and then handles deployment and auto scaling. The current offering supports Spring and Grails via tcServer. Future enhancements will add support for the Spring Tool Suite, Roo, Maven, etc. The current developer preview is free, only requiring an AWS account to provide access to EC2. New features will be added towards of the end of the year supporting SLA and other features. However the functionality present today will remain free of charge.
In comparing CloudFoundry and Spring's vision to other platforms in the space such as basic EC2, GAE, and Azure Soltero made a number of observations. On one side he said there are walled garden setups like Force.com that are not pure Java web applications. GAE also has a whitelist of API's. On the other hand basic EC2 "provides all the ingredients of a delicious meal but you have to cook it yourself". Spring CEO Rod Johnson stressed the fact that SpringSource wants to transparently enable developers to leverage cloud technologies while minimizing the disruptions on their day to day developer and the architectures they are developing.
Johnson also commented on the recent acquisition of SpringSource by VMware and how it impacts a variety of angles of their business and the Spring ecosystem. SpringSource will operate as a independent division of VMware that Johnson will lead. He said it is likely that being a part of VMware will allow the SpringSource division to increase resources. Such increases are likely to benefit not only cloud related API's but other areas of Spring. Johnson also highlighted the fruits of consolidation of technologies such as CloudFoundry and Grails into the SpringSource portfolio. The Spring Tool Suite will soon be gaining support for deployment to Cloud Foundry. SpringSource has also been able to recently add first class Grails and Groovy support to Eclipse.