VMware Adds Another Piece To Their Cloud Arsenal

VMware's SpringSource division will acquire GemStone Systems, a maker of in-memory database-caching software that enables the development, deployment and management of cloud-centric applications. The acquisition follows on the heels of the recent deal for Rabbit Technologies, as well as, VMware's decision to grab SpringSource itself in last year. These moves represent an awareness that one of the keys to greater cloud computing adoption lies in the ability to manage cloud-centric applications across a distributed environment in a secure, highly scalable manner.

“Data management technologies are fundamental to the creation of applications, and with the rise of virtualization and cloud computing, the manner in which applications need to access data is evolving,” said Rod Johnson, general manager of the SpringSource division of VMware. “Cloud computing is a distributed deployment model, and for that reason, caching and data accessibility are of far greater strategic importance than before. We are acquiring and will integrate into the SpringSource portfolio a well-regarded set of high-performing data management solutions with GemStone.”

Richard Lamb, president of GemStone, added: "Basically what GemFire does is load live data into this middleware [layer], and Java applications interact with it in real time, as if it were a real data store. At the end of the day, that data is typically put back into a relational store or some sort of asynchronous end-of-day record." As a result, there is a significant improvement in application performance.