At this year’s VMworld, VMware is unveiling our vision for enabling IT as a Service. Today’s announcement outlines the three major layers of the IT stack that we feel are critical to delivering IT as a service—cloud infrastructure and management, cloud application platform, and end user computing—and lays out our roadmap for addressing it. Spring developer technologies and SpringSource middleware play a key role in our vision, and we believe we are opening exciting new opportunities to our community.

As part of this strategy, we are announcing our cloud application platform, under the new VMware vFabric brand. This platform delivers on the promise of VMware’s acquisition of SpringSource, pulling together our assets into a single, next-generation infrastructure. While the respective components will remain available separately, we believe this integrated offering will provide a simpler, more efficient, option.

The VMware vFabric platform combines the Spring development framework and tools with VMware vFabric platform services that enable fast delivery of next-generation applications that are instantly scalable and cloud-portable.

Today’s announcement is a natural continuation of our work over the last 5 years. We started out by transforming enterprise Java productivity with the Spring Framework and the innovation of POJO programming; extended the Spring programming model to address security, batch, integration and other important requirements; continued to simplify enterprise Java deployment with tc Server and Hyperic; further helped productivity with SpringSource Tool Suite, Grails and Spring Roo; added cloud-ready messaging and data grid capabilities with our acquisitions of Rabbit Technologies and GemStone Systems; and integrated with the industry’s leading virtualization solution. Out of these best of breed parts, we are today announcing a unified platform.

Why is a New Application Platform Needed?

The rise of virtualization and cloud computing combined with the popularity of consumer and software-as-a-service applications such as Facebook and Salesforce.com are driving significant shifts in application architectures – across infrastructure, applications, data access, and how end users interact with applications.

Modern applications need to be easy to use, data rich, and provide access anywhere, anytime. Developers need the frameworks, tools and platform services that enable them to build great applications and immediately deploy those applications onto an intelligent platform that provisions itself on demand and scales the application based on policy.

IT needs a platform for this new generation of applications that is free of the complexity, bloat and limitations of prior-generation architectures.

The Unique Value We Provide

The VMware vFabric cloud application platform combines the Spring projects and tools used by millions of Java developers with the VMware vFabric platform services required for powering next-generation applications. The shift toward cloud computing tends to mix developer and operational concerns; we believe that understanding and addressing modern developer requirements is essential.

The path to cloud begins with developer tools and features that make it easy to create new applications that provide a rich, modern user experience and integrate with other applications using proven EAI patterns. Spring applications can be deployed across any Java platform, including WebSphere, WebLogic, JBoss, our own tc Server, as well as public cloud platforms. The best way to get started is to download the SpringSource Tool Suite, which provides a rich development environment and runtime platform that makes creating Spring and Grails applications quick and easy.

VMware vFabric delivers the lightweight footprint and transparent visibility necessary for applications to make the best use of the underlying virtual infrastructure platform with technologies such as tc Server and Hyperic. The platform addresses the technical challenges of cloud computing head on, supporting new approaches to data management that enable applications to scale across elastic, geographically distributed cloud architectures with our GemFire and RabbitMQ technologies.

Where Are We Headed?

At VMworld, we have 6 demo pods where we will be showing the VMware vFabric cloud application platform in action. I encourage you to drop by and check it out.

Our Spring and vFabric engineers continue the blistering pace and will be highlighting even more innovation at the SpringOne 2GX conference in Chicago from October 19 – 22, 2010. In support of our partnerships with Salesforce.com and Google , we have been hard at work extending the Spring programming model and vFabric platform services to enable developers to deploy applications across cloud platforms such as VMforce and Google AppEngine. We encourage you to come see the new advances for yourself.

We feel we have a unique ability to provide the millions of enterprise Java developers with a clear and innovative path to cloud computing architectures, powered by a modern programming model paired with next-generation platform services. A path that is not overgrown with the cruft and complexity of prior-generation architectures. The journey will be fun, and I look forward to taking it together.