$420M for an IOC framework? Not bad!
We’ve written an equivalent in .Net, just more efficient, to support our code infrastructure, and it costed us a tiny fracture of $420 million.

Obviously, VMWare payed for the talent.

Are you seriously trying to compare that framework you wrote with Spring, which has at least one order of magnitude more features?

Congrats to Rod Johnson and the rest of SpringSource folk! This is excellent news for Spring community, and a great reward for years of supporting and donating this great framework to the masses.

Just to clarify, from the start, the Spring Framework was much more than just an IoC framework.

Other than that, the Spring portfolio has broadened a lot in the last years, to include things like Spring Integration (for enterprise integration scenarios), Spring Batch (for batch processing) and others.

Also, SpringSource has a lot of committers on various other open source projects such as Eclipse and Tomcat and it is one of the leaders of the up and coming modularity standard called OSGi.

Last but not least, SpringSource has in the past few years also focused on dynamic language (by acquiring G2One, the company sustaining the development of the Groovy language and the Grails web development framework). On top of that, by acquiring Hyperic earlier this year, there’s also a great and open source offering for managing applications.

So yes, I would say SpringSource is about much more than just an IoC framework.

cheers,
Alef Arendsen

p.s. disclosure: I have a vested interest in SpringSource

SpringSource is going Cloud-Native. Travel details can be found on Burton Group’s Application Platform Strategies blog.

In case you are wondering, here’s a lengthy interview of SprinSource CEO Rod Johnson where he discusses the company:
http://www.sramanamitra.com/2009/01/14/springsource-ceo-rod-johnson-part-1/

i love vmware. i use it all the time

Rod Johnson gave a special gift to the Java community back in 03: Spring. I’m glad to see he’s handsomely rewarded for his contributions.

Spring already supports .NET

Spring MVC, JDBC, Remoting, Secuirty, AOP/Advice, Scheduling, Pooling, etc… invaluable and certainly more than just and IoC framework.

Wait — so they do what exactly?

Here are two blog posts that give more context on the reasons behind the deal, one from VMware CTO Steve Herrod: http://bit.ly/uUrU2 and one from SpringSource CEO Rod Johnson http://bit.ly/CtcuI

You honestly think they paid that money for an ioc codebase? Classic developer.

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=springsource

loved it..

[...] second is the much larger deal – VMWare’s $400+ million acquisition of Springsource, an enterprise and web application development and management startup. Benchmark [...]

[...] second is the much larger deal – VMWare’s $400+ million acquisition of Springsource, an enterprise and web application development and management startup. Benchmark [...]

[...] TechCrunch has a good post with some more facts. [...]

Back in the day, I ported a Pilot app over to Atari Basic, but never got the residuals.

[...] VMWare Acquires SpringSourceToday VMWare has announced the acquisition of SpringSource, a provider of Web application development and management services. The deal closed at a $420 …TechCrunchIT – http://www.techcrunchit.com/|||VMware to Buy SpringSource for $420MVMware (s vmw) today said it [...]

A lot of people seem to forget that SpringSource purchased Covalent not that long ago. Wouldn’t be surprised if that has as much to do with the acquisition as the Spring Framework does.

Very impressive for something that started out as a bunch of example programs to back a book!

I do feel that Spring is the biggest ‘Golden Hammer’ in use in enterprise development at the moment. There are definitely many situations where it is the framework/container of choice, but also I see many companies throwing it at all problems without stopping to think what constitutes the actual technology requirement.

And of the 30+ open-source projects that I have used, I have had to look at the source code of Spring the most – trying to figure out exactly what is happening…

[...] de SpringSource, un proveedor de desarrollo de aplicaciones web y servicios de gestión. El acuerdo se ha valorado en 420 millones de dólares, 362 de los mismos en efectivo y unos 58 millones en [...]

[...] second is the much larger deal – VMWare’s $400+ million acquisition of Springsource, an enterprise and web application development and management startup. Benchmark [...]

+1

SpringSource developed an excellent framework which they gave to public and developed a very good business model around consulting.
Their business model was better than Sun microsystem which focused mainly on hardware.
VM ware gets an excellent product base and a super team

Hilarious!

Java in the enterprise is quickly becomming a poor investment. Fail.

relatively new to this. Great post Cameron, I linked to your article at http://www.techbanking.blogspot.com which highlights the VMW transaction from a banking perspective.

[...] platform-as-a-service provider. The announcement comes just nine days after SpringSource was itself acquired by [...]

[...] platform-as-a-service provider. The announcement comes just nine days after SpringSource was itself acquired by [...]

[...] has had a big month. The company recently acquired SpringSource, a provider of Web application development and management services. The deal closed at a $420 [...]

[...] recent exits for Accel include VMWare’s $420 million acquisition of SpringSource in August and Yahoo buying Xoopit for $20 million in [...]

[...] recent exits for Accel include VMWare’s $420 million acquisition of SpringSource in August and Yahoo buying Xoopit for $20 million in [...]

[...] recent exits for Accel include VMWare’s $420 million acquisition of SpringSource in August and Yahoo buying Xoopit for $20 million in [...]

[...] recent exits for Accel include VMWare’s $420 million acquisition of SpringSource in August and Yahoo buying Xoopit for $20 million in [...]

[...] de SpringSource, un proveedor de desarrollo de aplicaciones web y servicios de gestión. El acuerdo se ha valorado en 420 millones de dólares, 362 de los mismos en efectivo y unos 58 millones en [...]

[...] few days after SpringSource was acquired by VMWare for $420M, SpringSource acquired also CloudFoundry to support their cloud deployment [...]

[...] is a leader in enterprise and Web application development and management.  Press Release   TechCrunch   VentureBeat   [...]

[...] is a leader in enterprise and Web application development and management.  Press Release TechCrunch VentureBeat [...]

[...] strategically to their businesses (Amazon-Zappos, Facebook-Friendfeed, Google-On2, Yahoo!-Xoopit, VMWare-Springsource, RIM-Torch Mobile, Intuit-Mint, etc.) Some acquirers are returning to the market with multiple [...]

[...] strategically to their businesses (Amazon-Zappos, Facebook-Friendfeed, Google-On2, Yahoo!-Xoopit, VMWare-Springsource, RIM-Torch Mobile, Intuit-Mint, etc.) Some acquirers are returning to the market with multiple [...]

[...] さらに重要な点は、買収された企業が買収した企業のビジネス戦略において重要な役割を担っていることだ。（Amazon-Zappos、Facebook-Friendfeed、Google-On2、Yahoo!-Xoopit、VMWare-Springsource、RIM-Torch Mobile、Intuit-Mint、等々）。一部の大手企業は繰り返し戦略的企業買収を行っている。（Adobe、 EMC、IBM、Thomson Reuters、Yahoo!、Google、等々）。またM&Aの件数は各分野（エンドユーザー向けウェブ事業、通販、広告、エンタープライズ、エコ技術、等々）にわたって平均して増加している。 [...]

[...] portfolio company acquisitions in early August. Facebook acquired FriendFeed for $50 million and VMWare acquired SpringSource for over $400 million. Benchmark also had an exit with Mint.com, which was bought by Intuit during [...]

They still shopping: http://www.virtualizationtimes.com/vmware-acquire-yahoo%E2%80%99s-zimbra-unit

Fred

[...] is a leader in enterprise and Web application development and management. Press Release TechCrunch VentureBeat [...]

[...] is leveraging the Java development framework which was acquired by VMware when the company bought SpringSource for $420 million. SpringSource provides a development platform for engineers to build enterprise [...]

[...] is leveraging the Java development framework which was acquired by VMware when the company bought SpringSource for $420 million. SpringSource provides a development platform for engineers to build enterprise [...]

[...] is leveraging the Java development framework which was acquired by VMware when the company bought SpringSource for $420 million. SpringSource provides a development platform for engineers to build enterprise [...]

[...] is leveraging the Java development framework which was acquired by VMware when the company bought SpringSource for $420 million. SpringSource provides a development platform for engineers to build enterprise [...]

[...] これは、Javaデベロッパにとって嬉しいニュースかもしれない。企業向け総合WebサービスSalesforce.comと、仮想化のトップ企業VMwareが提携して、エンタプライズJavaのためのクラウドプラットホームVMforceを立ち上げる。これによりJavaデベロッパは、Force.comをプラットホームとするクラウドアプリケーションをJavaで構築できるようになる。そのためにSalesforceが利用するのが、VMwareが$420M（4億2000万ドル）で買収したSpringSourceのJava開発フレームワークだ。すなわちSpringSourceは、エンタプライズJavaアプリケーションを構築するための開発プラットホームSpringを提供している。 [...]

[...] on VMWare in the SFDC data centers.  Java apps will run on the SpringSource tc Server leveraging VMWare’s aquistion of SpringSource.   Information Week characterized Spring applications: “as lightweight Java in the same way as [...]