VMware now owns the open-source king of light-weight web-facing Java development. So what? My top five.

(They didn’t give their graphics people much warning apparently. Notice the harsh layer transitions between the Spring Source Build Run Manage pie and the softer vCloud. Let’s hope they invest more in product integration.)

1. This is all about making the leap from being relevant to IT Operations, to relevant to IT Developers. End of story. Real software companies have developers. See Oracle buying Java, sorry, uh I mean Sun Microsystems. Right now VMware owns the enterprise standard for hardware virtualization, a niche devoid of software developers.
2. VMware is going to be doing more than hardware virtualization and management for the cloud. Simple point but a radical one a year ago. Cloud does not equal hardware virtualization and with the Spring Source buy VMware just publically agreed. VMware was best buddies with Cisco because of their mutual desire to ad virtualization value close to the hardware and networking layer. Now VMware just saved the next dance for a much higher layer of abstraction. This won’t end that relationship but its an important milestone in it.
3. VMware signaled its desire to grow. Lots of VMware fans have been defending their stalling growth to me for month’s with “oh but they have 95% market share what do you want from them!” The plan is not to defend their technical lead in hardware virtualization. Instead they are going to use the operational advantages of hardware virtualization and extend that leverage up further into the stack—potentially knitting together a unified operational and development model for enterprise clouds. (wow!)
4. This won’t be a point acquisition and marks the first step in a bold strategy. If they do it right they will create commercial software primitives for enterprise cloud computing. Google, Facebook, etc already build their whole architecture around these development primitives and thus enjoy immensely better utilization performance and scalability. If VMware can become an enterprise cloud primitive company watch out. If they are serious about this market look for lots more development model focused products and acquisitions.
5. The crew at siliconANGLE called this one. We have been hammering on the importance of the changing development models and APIs of cloud vs. point cloud washed infrastructure technologies and offerings:

So expect cloud to be in most sales pitches for legacy infrastructure, somehow, someway. This in turn gives rise to lots of noise in the press–and you can see the challenge. Keep your eye on changing development models and you’ll be at the center of the change instead of on the noisy marketing driven periphery.

The migration of hundreds of billions of dollars in existing IT spend value up-stack to higher levels of abstraction is what makes Cloud Collision one of three big topics here on the ANGLE. More fun is ahead, and it won’t all be pretty.

My big question back to everyone:  just how far will VMware go down this rabbit hole?