VMware to acquire SpringSource

Mumbai: VMware announced a major step forward in its journey to help simplify IT by entering into a definitive agreement to acquire SpringSource. Both the companies plan to deliver compelling new solutions that enable companies to more efficiently build, run and manage applications within both internal and external cloud architectures.

"Today's modern computing environments are moving to an application and data-centric world powered by state of the art virtualized and cloud computing platforms," said Paul Maritz, President and CEO, VMware. "The combination of SpringSource and VMware capitalizes on this shift and places us right at the intersection of the most important forces in the software market today-virtualization, modern application frameworks and cloud computing," he added.

VMware will acquire SpringSource for approximately $362 million in cash and equity plus the assumption of approximately $58 million of unvested stock and options. The acquisition has been approved by SpringSource's stockholders and is expected to close in the third quarter of 2009, subject to customary closing conditions.

Together, VMware and SpringSource plan to further innovate and develop integrated platform as a service (PaaS) solutions that can be hosted at customer data centers or at cloud service providers. These solutions will allow customers to rapidly build new enterprise and web applications, and run and manage them in the same dynamic, scalable and cost-efficient vSphere-based internal or external clouds that can also host and manage their existing applications, providing an evolutionary path to the future. Forrester Research expects the emerging and rapidly growing PaaS market to expand to $15 billion by 2016.

"VMware has led the modernization of datacenter infrastructures through innovative virtualization and cloud architectures, providing customers with cost savings, agility and choice," said Rod Johnson, CEO, SpringSource. "The SpringSource team and community are committed to revolutionizing the way companies build, run and manage applications. By combining forces, I'm confident that we'll be able to deliver a set of truly remarkable solutions that dramatically simplify enterprise IT," he added.