Assessing the Salesforce.com and VMware Java Platform Push

On Tuesday Salesforce.com and VMware made good on their promise of big news with the announcement of VMforce, an enterprise Java cloud computing platform as a service (PaaS) for the Java developer community. It was hard to miss the news and there was a ton of coverage from analysts, the major news outlets and bloggers alike.

As I discussed in an earlier blog, this is big news because the Java community is huge, estimated at over 6 million, and it finally gives these developers a cloud-based Java development environment. It's a coup for both Salesforce.com and VMware and represents a smart strategic move for both companies as the race for developers accelerates in cloud computing.

First, to get the gist of the VMforce announcement, check out Anshu Sharma's take on it in his Enterprise Irregulars post: VMforce: Why? What? How? It's very well done and looks at things from the CIO's chair, as well as, from the perspective of business users and, most importantly, developers. Of course, this may not be the most objective view of things, but that's not the point of this one. Sharma is after all the senior director of Force.com platform product management. But what he does do is give a great summary of the the new PaaS offering.

Now, if you want a little bit more objective take on things then check out Charles Babcock's analysis in InformationWeek, VMware Plus Salesforce.com, An Unlikely Pair. He concludes with what most people are quickly realizing: "With the VMware/Saleforce partnership, there will be a second cloud platform for developers in play. [The other is Microsoft Azure.] Both are going to speed the shift from on-premises only development to on-premises plus the cloud."

Want to go a little deeper with the analysis? Interested in what this means for the developer community at large, and ultimately, the business side of enterprise applications? Then read Dennis Howlett's piece in ZDnet, VMforce: re-architecting Salesforce for the future. There's lots of worthwhile insight and I highly recommend it. Howlett has a lot of experience in the enterprise apps space and brings that to bear as he looks at the impact of VMforce on competitors like Oracle and SAP both of which, as he says, are "substantial Java shops". He goes on to say, "Whichever way you look at it, VMForce has the potential to become a wedge by which Salesforce.com and FinancialForce drive adoption in businesses that might not require the functional weight of SAP/Oracle apps but need something that has development legs."

Finally, make sure you read Michael Cote's excellent review of the news in his RedMonk piece, The Java Cloud? VMforce - Quick Analysis. It covers similar territory as the others, but also includes an interesting take on the developer toolset and what this means in the larger context of PaaS as adoption climbs. He even posits the idea of Java on the Microsoft Azure platform. Again, a definite one to read.

So, that's it. I've waded through a ton of articles on VMforce. And these are the ones that are essential reading.