Analysts and observers are still digesting the recent news of VMware's acquisition of SpringSource for $420 million, and I continue to find interesting perspectives cropping up. As we discussed here, the move has the potential to put the squeeze on Red Hat, especially in the application server and enterprise software development markets. It also gives VMware a lot more credibility with developers, because SpringSource's Spring Framework is a popular enterprise Java programming environment, it maintains the Apache Tomcat Java app server project, and more. It also gives VMware a strong presence in the open source arena, when it has been seriously threatened by open source virtualization offerings.
This week, though, Todd Weiss, writing on Linux.com, discussed how many analysts see the move as allowing VMware to tie virtualization directly to applications without requiring a separate operating system. Could VMware have its eye on the fast-growing Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) arena, aiming to deliver virtualized apps that users and IT administrators can hop in and out of without a tie to a parent OS??
