Who’s On Phirst

There is a lot of discussion in the market right now on the Spring Framework and development language because of the recent VMware acquisition of SpringSource. First, for those of you not that familiar with Spring, it is a lightweight J2EE application platform and integration model. Spring also helps reduce the complexities involved when developing J2EE applications. For example, in the J2EE EJB model, Spring only requires you to create your Domain Module using Java Beans freeing your from a lot of code writing required by J2EE. Spring has found a place in thousands of companies worldwide. In fact, we use Spring at Phurnace to help us manage the multitude of MBeans we support.

Now, if you’re going to be running your Spring application on its own, you have a very simple deployment process. However, most companies want the ease of development that Spring provides but the robustness that a full-blown Java Application Server can provide. In this case, your Spring based application has all of the same deployment challenges as a J2EE spec application has. It still needs to have the target app server configured, tweaked and set up to correctly run the app. That is where Phurnace comes in. So, yes, Spring-developed apps as well as J2EE apps are handled by our deployment automation product.

Now, a comment on the SpringSource acquisition. The VMware acquisition of SpringSource is all about the assembling of a “stack” for the quicker and easier building and deploying of applications in the cloud. Finally, the world is starting to move to a more application-centric view of IT. No longer is the data center a place where servers run infrastructure. IT is about applications. Everything is there for the support of those applications. The cloud is an environment with a very application-centric approach. However, it will not replace the data center, but instead, augment it. AND, applications will need to migrate between instances in the cloud and between images and servers on premises behind the firewall. To and from the cloud. That is a bunch of configurations tasks or custom scripts that will need to be constantly tweaked and maintained. Unless you use Phurnace. You see, Phurnace can move the applications to and from the cloud and to and from any virtual image, regardless of where it is.

VMWare made a good move by acquiring SpringSource and it will speed adoption of the cloud for development and testing. However, the story isn’t complete without Phurnace. Thank you VMware for laying the groundwork for more robust cloud usage, we are ready willing and able to make sure the applications are actually deployed correctly with Phurnace.

Also, for more information, please read this blog on Spring and JMX posted by one of our developers: http://www.phurnace.com/blog/spring-plays-well-with-jmx.html

In VMware, Spring Framework
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We are in the middle of a two week industry analyst tour right now and we completed some really good briefings last week.  Lots of discussion on the need to provide rapid ROI, the need to show immediate cost savings to IT departments, how to leverage the desire in companies to use even more automation and of course, the Cloud.  Phurnace is in a very good place related to the hottest trends in IT.  Automation, a shift to an application centric mind-set in IT, cost reduction, and cloud computing.  The analysts see this and almost before we got to slide 2 in our presentation asked the question, “what do you think of VMWare’s acquisition of SpringSource?  Is the bubble back?”  First, no, the bubble isn’t back.  While $420 million is a great price for SpringSource, this is NOT like the days of $1.2 billion for Toothpaste.com or such silly things.   Those days are gone forever.  SpringSource has a huge following, real revenue and will add to VMWare’s product portfolio in a good way.   I see the SpringSource acquisition as good for everyone.  For them, for VMWare, for the market, for the momentum of virtualization and cloud computing.

We took the opportunity with the analysts that we met to talk about the future of app deployment in the cloud and where Phurnace fits today, but even more exciting, where we will fit in the near future.  We got great feedback and our ideas were validated.  We have some exciting plans for additional products targeted at the cloud.  Amazon Web Services first, other public clouds after that.

We were continually asked, “why aren’t you partnering with VMWare?”  Actually, that makes sense.  Our software deploys applications into physical, virtual or cloud environments.  VMWare would be a logical partner.  We have just been so busy with other customer requests.  I guess since our software works out of the box with VMWare, we didn’t really see a need to call them and bother them.  I bet they have their hands full right now with SpringSource. 

In Virtualization, Cloud Computing, Amazon Web Services
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According to a new survey by research and consulting firm Hurwitz & Associates, manual configuration errors are wreaking havoc across IT organizations, not only impacting developer and staff productivity, but also causing significant delays in the roll out of customer-facing web applications. These errors are resulting in application downtime costing companies as much as $72,000 per hour.

• 86 percent of companies reported their web applications were now either very important or mission-critical.
• Web applications are now viewed as one of the primary methods for interacting with customers, partners and suppliers. When errors occur, critical customer-facing web applications fail.

• The average company is spending $852,187 per year in personnel costs to create, maintain and support deployment scripts.
• 56 percent of organizations have 11 employees or more dedicated to the ongoing configuration, installation and deployment of web applications.
• 14 percent of respondents were shown to have more than 81 employees assigned to this task.
• 38 percent of organizations employ 11 or more employees to write and maintain custom deployment scripts.

• Internal costs for large sites were shown to be as high as $72,000 an hour for downtime.
• Almost 35 percent of respondents said that at least a quarter of their downtime was caused by configuration changes and errors. In addition, 72 percent of respondents regarded this downtime as “significant”.
• Many errors are caused by the inability to keep track of what changes have been made to configuration and deployment scripts.

• Organizations with large web applications are seeing up to a 20 percent increase in annual maintenance.
• As more companies move to virtualization, the workloads of existing web applications are increasing. 58 percent acknowledged this as a serious problem.

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