Earlier this week salesforce.com and VMware announced a partnership to deploy a java-based platform as a service (PaaS) called VMforce. Unfortunately I was not able to attend the announcement briefing in person as I was in Boston attending a Novell analyst summit. I've since spent a bit of time catching up on the announcement and had some time to think about the implications for customers, partners and competitors. The developer preview won't be available until this Fall so we have some time before the announcement will have any real impact for anyone beyond the beta users but still it is an interesting development in the PaaS world. A lot has already been written on VMforce so I won't spend a lot of time digging into what the PaaS will look like but instead focus on what implications it might have on the industry and on the enterprise.
What is VMforce? VMware's SpringSource GM, Rod Johnson, provides this simple explanation on his blog:
"VMforce is a joint service from VMware and SalesForce. VMforce uses the Force.com physical infrastructure to run vSphere with a special customized vCloud layer that allows for seamless scaling and management. Above this layer VMforce runs SpringSource tc Server instances that provide the execution environment for the enterprise applications that run on VMforce. Spring applications can store their own enterprise data in the Force.com database or use data already resident there. All of these architecture details are seamlessly integrated into a single platform that allows the developer to interact with the server in the way they would with a local tc Server or Tomcat instance."
During his part of the announcement presentation salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff claimed that Java developers using the VMforce platform could build apps "5 times faster and for 1/2 the cost." Now short of conducting a primary research project after the developer preview is available this Fall I have no way to substantiate that claim, but I will say that after watching the demo of developing on the VMforce platform is does appear significantly faster than approaching development in a traditional Java dev process. Part of that simplification is provided by the Spring Framework IDE of course but the integration with Force.com does provide some interesting advantages.
I've believed for some time that PaaS has the potential to be a disruptor in the enterprise SW world, although that disruption was likely to take place over a long period of time. The disruption itself is caused by the assertion that developers can build and deploy custom enterprise apps in less time than it takes to deploy and customize a traditional package app and for lower cost. I admit that at first I was a skeptic on this topic but after working with several salesforce.com Force.com partners I am inclined to believe the claims. One of the hurdles to adoption of the Force.com PaaS has been the proprietary development language Apex. Not that its flawed in some way, but simply that it is different and not widely used. There are not a lot of experienced Apex developers and training and experience take time. Java on the other hand is in widespread use and there are an estimated 6 million Java developers (and a reported 2 million of them are using the SpringSource platform already). Take the value proposition of PaaS and add in the Java dev community and well, scale and adoption become a benefit not an obstacle. VMforce has the potential to rapidly accelerate the disruption of PaaS.
From a competitive standpoint this move by salesforce and VMware helps create two distinct platform camps, Java and .Net. Currently Google, Oracle, IBM and now VMforce are on the Java platform with Microsoft Azure as the .Net offering. There is an active .Net community but it does not rival the Java community. Java apps can be deployed on Azure but the VMforce platform seems to change the game in ease of use.
The other interesting benefit from this partnership is the combined Force.com assets (like Chatter, for example) with the vSphere and SpringSource assets, a strong proposition. The Java PaaS story is a good one for ISV and developers and I wouldn't be surprised to see quick adoption of the model once available...and remember there are a lot of Java apps already available that could be quickly moved to the cloud on VMforce. Add to that the ease of building and deploying mobile apps on the Java platform and the potential is even larger as mobile continues to gain share in the enterprise.
