VMware's SpringSource Buys Java Caching Provider GemStone

VMware's August 2009 acquisition, Java Web development provider SpringSource, is busy making buys of its own.

SpringSource, which bought open messaging software maker Rabbit Technologies in April, announced May 6 that it had agreed to acquire in-memory Java cache maker GemStone Systems. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

SpringSource's Spring Framework provides a lightweight programming platform that makes applications portable across open-source and commercial application systems from IBM, Oracle, Dell, Hewlett-Packard and others.

However, the platform does not feature distributed Java caching, which is becoming a much-desired data center component as workloads increase and speed and performance requirements mount.

SpringSource will integrate GemStone's IP into Spring Framework and SpringSource's own Apache-based Web server.

GemStone uses distributed memcache to handle messaging of high volumes of data queries while providing many other storage-related functions, including partitioning and replication of block data.

GemStone can be deployed on a dedicated commodity-type server. Functions of this type used to require a mainframe or dedicated Unix or Solaris server to handle use cases such as high-volume financial transactions, scientific research, oil and gas exploration, and government agency tasks.

"VMware's acquisition of GemStone is further validation of in-memory caching as a powerful approach to scaling enterprise applications and improving their performance," Terracotta CEO Amit Pandey said in an e-mail to eWEEK. "It also shows that VMware understands that this is a large and growing market, due to the huge demand from enterprise customers to scale out applications on cloud infrastructures."

Terracotta, a competing San Francisco-based infrastructure maker that provides scalable, high-availability middleware for Java applications, recently acquired its own distributed caching specialist, Ehcache, maker of an already widely used product.
 
"What is a bit surprising is the company VMware chose, given SpringSource's reputation for ease of use, which in our view is the foundation of their market position," Pandey said. "Integrating the technologies will be a challenge, especially given that GemStone deployments are mostly in specialized use cases in some banks."