Virtualisation firm VMware is set to acquire the privately held SpringSource, a company in the enterprise and web application development and management space.
The acquisition is for approximately US$362m in cash and equity plus an estimated US$58 million of unvested stock and options. Acquisition dealings are expected to close in the third quarter of 2009.
Paul Maritz, president and chief executive officer, VMware, said of the deal: “Today’s modern computing environments are moving to an application and data-centric world powered by state of the art virtualized and cloud computing platforms.
“The combination of SpringSource and VMware capitalizes on this shift and places us right at the intersection of the most important forces in the software market today – virtualization, modern application frameworks and cloud computing.”
VMware and SpringSource will be working together to create, run and manage applications for within both internal and external cloud architectures in the growing Platform as a Service (PaaS) sector.
Forrester Research has estimated that this market will grow to US$15bn by 2016.
“VMware has led the modernization of data centre infrastructures through innovative virtualisation and cloud architectures, providing customers with cost savings, agility and choice,” said Rod Johnson, chief executive officer, SpringSource.
“The SpringSource team and community are committed to revolutionizing the way companies build, run and manage applications. By combining forces, I’m confident that we’ll be able to deliver a set of truly remarkable solutions that dramatically simplify enterprise IT.”
