VMware snaps up SpringSource
Published: 11 Aug 2009 08:27 BST
VMware said Monday that it will pay $420m for privately held SpringSource in a bid to become a bigger player in cloud-computing application management and the open-source community.
VMware, a virtualisation leader that is angling to become a cloud infrastructure OS giant, said SpringSource will put it at the intersection of virtualisation, application frameworks and cloud computing.
In a statement, VMware added that the deal will cost $362m (£220m) in cash and equity and the assumption of $58m in stock options. The deal is expected to close in the third quarter.
In a call with analysts on Monday, the company said it was reaffirming its third-quarter and fiscal-year guidance to reflect the deal. While the company said it expects the deal to have an impact on Q3 non-Gaap operating margins, it remained comfortable with the guidance it announced in its second quarter earnings call.
SpringSource is expected to round out VMware's platform-as-a-service plans. The companies plan to launch integrated platform as a service bundles with SpringSource software and VMware's vSphere cloud operating system.
SpringSource, which is five years old, has a vibrant open-source developer community and some big-name clients. VMware said it will continue "to support the principles that have made SpringSource solutions popular: the interoperability of SpringSource software with a wide variety of middleware software, and the open-source model that is important to the developer community".
In a blog post, chief executive Rod Johnson explained the opportunities as IT transforms itself: "The way in which people think about software stacks is changing. Virtualisation is reshaping the datacentre, and cloud computing is set to drive far-reaching changes.
"Significantly, cloud computing blurs the division between development and operations, bringing new power (and responsibility) to developers."
The purchase of SpringSource puts VMware at the forefront of some key areas. The Spring Framework supports half of all enterprise Java projects. Plus SpringSource supplies more than 95 percent of the bug fixes for Apache Tomcat, a popular Java application server, and has the Hyperic application monitoring tool.
Credit: VMware goes shopping: Buys SpringSource for $420 million; Can it keep the open source mojo? from ZDNet.com
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