News

SpringSource Launches New Lightweight Server

• By John K. Waters
• March 10, 2010

VMware subsidiary SpringSource, the chief commercial sponsor of the open source Spring Framework project, on Wednesday unveiled a new, lightweight edition of its tc Server. The new Spring edition, which will be available in April, provides a small footprint for running applications in virtualization and cloud-deployment architectures.

The company is billing the Apache Tomcat-based tc Server Spring Edition as "the best place to build and run Spring [Java] applications." And its features are aimed at both development teams and IT operations. Among other features, developers get an enhanced version of the dashboard that first appeared in the tc Server Developer Edition, launched last year. Operations gets new tools for managing the health, performance and quality of the Spring applications running on the platform.

"The developer creates the Spring applications, and the Spring Edition provides operational instrumentation around those applications through an administrator/operators console that they log into," explained Shaun Connolly, vice president of product management in VMware's SpringSource division. "It allows them to ensure that the apps are performing according to service levels and meeting the business goals. The Spring Edition provides those tools for understanding the performance characteristics, and enacting control actions based on that." 

The Spring Edition of the server is also integrated with the Apache Maven build manager for Java projects. And it's designed to make it easier for anyone currently running Spring applications on other Java EE servers to migrate to a Spring Server.

"The goal is to make the developers productive, but also give the operators the tools they need to make sure the applications are actually meeting the business needs," Connolly said. "There's a wave that's accelerating in 2010 and beyond around how you get automation and operational advantages. You do that with a much less complex infrastructure that can go from development through production in a much more straightforward and dynamic fashion."

The Developer Edition of the tc Server is available now for download from the SpringSource download center. It's also bundled in the free SpringSource Tool Suite.

It's been about six months since the VMware acquisition of SpringSource closed, and the division is finally getting a promo boost from the parent company. A new program called "Spring on VMware" aims to introduce SpringSource products into the broader VMware reseller and fulfillment distribution channel. The program, launched on March 1 and running through May 10, offers two free perpetual CPU licenses of tc Server Spring Edition and 60 days worth of support with any qualifying purchase of VMware's software, including vSphere, vCenter, View and ThinApp. More information is available on the VMware promotions page.

SpringSource is just generally in the process of "expanding and recruiting more application development solution provider partners" into the VMware partner ecosystem, Connolly said.

Spring is a layered Java/J2EE framework based on code published in the book Expert One-on-One Java EE Design and Development (Wrox Press, October 2002), by SpringSource co-founder Rod Johnson. He also wrote the first version of the framework. Johnson now serves as general manager of the SpringSource division of VMware.