VMware’s master plan for portable Java in the cloud

If I asked you to name major Java vendors, chances are EMC’s VMware subsidiary wouldn’t top the list. To most of us, the “VM” in VMware doesn’t stand for the Java Virtual Machine; it means the other kind of virtual machine, the kind that lets you run servers and desktops on virtualized OS instances. But if that’s your assumption, it may be time to change your thinking.

VMware is reinventing itself. Virtualization may have been the hot topic a few years ago, but its star faded once the OS vendors got into the game. Now cloud computing is the buzzword of the day. Observing the trends, Redmonk analyst James Governor went as far as to declare “cloud [computing] is the new VMware.” Naturally, then, the new VMware is cloud computing — and that puts Java square in its sights.

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At the Google I/O conference in San Francisco this week, VMware and Google announced a partnership aimed at making it easier for Java developers to deploy applications on the Google App Engine cloud computing service. This new deal comes hot on the heels of a similar arrangement VMware struck with Salesforce.com in late April, in which VMware provided infrastructure to allow Java apps to run on Salesforce’s Force.com platform.

With these partnerships, VMware is putting its customers on notice that it’s not merely a virtualization vendor, but a full-service provider of solutions for cloud computing. But developers should take notice, too, because if VMware continues down this path, it could potentially mean a whole new era for the Java platform.

Write once, cloud everywhere Sun Microsystems dubbed Java the “write once, run anywhere” language, but Java developers have always taken that phrase with a grain of salt. Early in the platform’s history, Microsoft deliberately tried to fragment the Java market by shipping its own, incompatible version — but even Sun’s own JVM could be inconsistent from OS to OS. Apple, once a Java backer, dropped support for the language from its Mac OS X developer platform and won’t allow it on the iPhone or iPad. The Java ME market is hopelessly fragmented. Browser applets are dead.

The bright spot for Java has always been the datacenter. But as I’ve mentioned before, cloud computing has the potential to fragment the server-side Java market, by encouraging developers to code their applications to a specific cloud vendor’s services and requirements. For example, unlike Force.com, Google App Engine supported Java before its deal with VMware, but it has been criticized for not supporting the full Java API. If developers code to Google’s whitelist of classes rather than the Java standard, then Google has in effect created its own, de facto standard.

With VMware’s partnership with Google, however, a master plan seems to be emerging. According to VMware’s press release, Google and VMware’s combined toolkit will allow developers to deploy their applications not just to App Engine, but to VMware platforms, Amazon EC2, and even other (unnamed) cloud platforms.

Frameworks are the key. None of these services supports Java EE, which is considered too resource-intensive for cloud environments. But they do offer the comparable yet considerably more lightweight Spring framework developed by SpringSource, a VMware subsidiary. Google adds the Google Web Toolkit to the mix, which compiles client-side Java code into efficient, cross-browser compatible JavaScript. By making these powerful tools available on a variety of cloud platforms, VMware is creating a kind of “middleware for the cloud” that abstracts the raw cloud services, allowing developers to write cloud-based apps that are truly portable.

Oracle: Friend or foe? You might think portability would be a bad thing for Google. Allowing customers to switch cloud service providers on a whim sounds like a recipe for a price war. But cloud computing is in its infancy, and many potential business customers still have doubts. A strategy based on vendor lock-in is likely to only scare them off. Google is betting that cloud vendors will be able to compete on the quality of their offerings. For example, Google’s just-announced App Engine for Business offers a 99.9 percent uptime SLA (service-level agreement) — without resorting to strong-arm tactics.

I can think of one big vendor that might not share Google and VMware’s way of thinking, though. Oracle CEO Larry Ellison has often derided the very concept of cloud computing, once telling The Wall Street Journal, “What is [cloud computing]? It’s complete gibberish. It’s insane.”

Not, mind you, that he won’t throw Oracle’s weight behind cloud computing if the market demands it. “We’ll make cloud computing announcements,” Ellison said. “I’m not going to fight this thing. But I don’t understand what we would do differently in the light of cloud.”

In this case, “not doing anything differently” could mean Java EE. With its $8.5 billion acquisition of BEA Systems in 2008, Oracle became the leading supplier of Java EE tools. Ellison isn’t likely to sit back and let an upstart like VMware’s Spring framework outcompete Java EE for the cloud — especially not now that Oracle is the undisputed heavyweight of the Java market. Still, Spring has already garnered a strong and loyal following. It will be interesting to see how this battle pans out.

Sun liked to say “the network is the computer.” With the advent of cloud platforms, this has never been truer. What better language for the cloud, then, than Java? It’s reliable, network-savvy, secure, and perhaps, with a little nudge from VMware and friends, it can actually be as portable as it always promised. Let’s just hope this new VMware has the market muscle to pull it off.

This article, “VMware’s master plan for portable Java in the cloud,” originally appeared at InfoWorld.com. Read more of Neil McAllister’s Fatal Exception blog and follow the latest news in software development at InfoWorld.com.