The landscape of the application development platform is divided into two – .NET and Java. When Microsoft announced .NET a decade back, I expected that they would officially come out with an Application Server to compete with the Weblogic and the Webspheres of the world. But Microsoft’s pitch has always been that Windows Server has it all! Every instance of Windows Server can be enabled for an ‘Application Role‘ which includes Web Server (IIS), Development Runtime (.NET), Enterprise Services (COM+), Message Queuing (MSMQ) and Web Services (WCF).
Borland (Borland ES), IBM (WebSphere), Sun/Oracle/BEA (Glassfish, OC4J & WebLogic), Redhat (JBoss), SAP (NetWeaver) and others like Apache (Geronimo) created a niche market for J2EE Application Servers offering the application services running within the Java context.
Any enterprise customer deciding to deploy an Application Server will first zero-in on the development platform. If it is Microsoft, the choice is simple; it is Windows Server. But, if the enterprise application is Java based, then there are quite a few Application Servers to choose from. So, the Application Server market is primarily divided between .NET and J2EE.
Fast forward this to 2010 and I feel this is pretty much repeated in the Cloud within the PaaS landscape. After announcing a partnership with SalesForce.com, VMware has made another huge announcement at the Google I/O event. Google App Engine now supports Spring framework powered by VMware! I always complained that Google’s App Engine is limited in its capability and the massive re-factoring that has to be done for porting an application to GAE. With Google and VMware springing (pun intended) the surprise, both these concerns are addressed. Now any Java developer can download and setup the Spring environment on his/her machine and then target Google App Engine for deployment.
When I first read about VMware’s Open PaaS vision, I have to admit that I didn’t take it too seriously. But now that they are on a signing spree with the partners to support Spring on their respective Cloud environments, it looks very promising. Every Java developer can now choose to deploy either on SalesForce or Google App Engine. I have a feeling that VMware is talking to IBM, Oracle and others who have the potential to make it big on the Cloud. What is more exciting is that the enterprises can setup a Private Cloud running on VMware’s VSphere running the same PaaS and then deploy and switch across multiple Cloud vendors. If VMware succeeds in convincing every major Java PaaS vendor to support Spring, it can safely claim to have created an Open PaaS platform. Spring insulates the Java Cloud applications from the underlying PaaS and brings in portability. This delivers the much talked about Cloud Portability at least in the Java PaaS environments.
VMware's Open PaaS
Five years from now, the PaaS world would be again divided between Microsoft (Windows Azure) and rest of the world (Java PaaS potentially powered by Spring).
Do you agree with my viewpoint?
As a Cloud Computing Strategist, Janakiram MSV helps businesses understand and adopt the Cloud Computing paradigm. His core strength is designing and architecting solutions for the Cloud. Janakiram focuses on industry's leading Cloud Computing offerings including Microsoft Windows Azure.
{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
Very nice analysis.Every time its Microsoft vs Rest of the industry
The yesterday announcement with Google is entirely different from with one vmware made with sales force. Here is why
In vmforce its vmware + spring on salesforce datacenter. There is a revenue sharing model + a business contract between the two companies.
Where us in the GoogleIO announcement its more like vmware made better Spring tooling support on App engine.(It already works anyway).There is no change in the Google infrastructure. GAE still remains the target platform for python and other JVM / non-spring platform applications.
It just makes the developer community to gets attracted towards Spring and vmware (for private clouds).
Also for PaaS interoperability isn’t depends on the applications services (Storage, Identity) the PaaS platform provides?
Agree with you that the Google I/O announcement is different from that of VMForce. But looks like VMware is all set to make every Java PaaS embrace its framework. Tooling is absolutely essential to drive platform adoption and STS is a great step towards that.
PaaS Interop certainly depends on the underlying services but I believe that VMware will bring in more portability to the PaaS world.
Interesting thoughts and predictions !!
The way things are going, your predictions go hands up >> It’s Microsoft’s Azure VS all Java PaaS cloud computing vendors.
Also, what’s really interesting to see is how Microsoft’s counters this challenge. Already saw in PDC 2009 how it has started supporting Java and PHP Apps. on Azure. What more will it do .. ?
Will it also support Java Frameworks, etc .. ?
This all remains to be seen.
Watch out for the VMRole support on Azure. You can deploy a custom VM of your choice that may run your favorite Java App Server.
I can’t imagine there’s any problem running Spring-framework-powered Java applications on Windows Azure today.
Steve – Feels good to see you commenting on my blog
. Thanks for dropping by!
I did deploy a couple Java apps on Azure through the Tomcat Accelerator. Though it is technically quite feasible, I believe Azure would never be the first choice of a serious Java developer. The tooling (Eclipse & NetBeans), the API and the local emulation environment (may be on non Windows platforms as well) got to be much more mature to make it appeal to the Java folks.
I agree with your views. But i think MS will come with a strong solution for java community. But the major problem is to win mind share from java community which will be a tough task for MS.
I think forthcoming features on Azure are very interesting one of which is VM Role as you rightly mentioned.
Quite interesting. Perhaps the VMWare & Google collaboration will lead to some industry standard in cloud, & will address a major concern i.e. Vendor-Lock-in.
Also, I am not so familiar with the Java environment but I can confidently say that the development time decreases significantly with .Net framework. Azure will definitely get a head start with 1000s of .Net developer ready to go to the next level.
Off-Topic: Jani, your blog is quite informative, a gold-mine for cloud computing
Amazon is still the largest player of them all in the Cloud Computing business – they have the largest computing platform, most number of edge locations all over the world, the lowest prices, the largest amount of functionality and the greatest flexibility. Azure and GAE are just two flashes in a pan compared to AWS, currently.