VMWare Buys SpringSource

Filed in archive Business on August 12, 2009

VMWare this week announced plans to acquire SpringSource for $362 million in cash and equity, plus the assumption of approximately $58 million of unvested stock and options.

"No open source code company has fetched such a price since Red Hat bought JBoss for $350 million in 2006, or Yahoo bought Zimbra for $350 million and Citrix Systems bought XenSource for $500 million, both in 2007," writes InformationWeek's Charles Babcock. "The acquisition aims to give VMware the means of broadening its virtual machine management software suite... the deal also underscores how 150-employee SpringSource has become one of the most successful open source companies over the course of five years."

"The VMware-SpringSource marriage promises to boost the combined company's position in the so-called platform-as-a-service market," notes Red Herring's Scott Martin. "The nascent platform as a service, or PaaS, model provides a complete computing platform for others to build Web-based businesses upon. The market for platform as a service is inhabited by the likes of such companies as Amazon and Google. Forrester Research forecasts the market for PaaS to reach $15 billion by 2016."

More here from Ars Technica ... more here from ZDNet ... more here from CNET ... and the press release is here.