The $420 million acquisition of the cloud computing platform SpringSource by the virtualization vendor VMware essentially reflects VMware’s move towards becoming a full enterprise platform company in the times to come.

Apparently, the takeover shows that VMware has decided to compete straight on with its market rivals – Microsoft, Oracle, and Red Hat – assuming the future prospects of the frameworks serving as the launch pads for cloud computing. 

Another reason for VMware buying SpringSource, which became quite evident during VMware’s Monday conference call with investors, could be that VMware probably wants to associate itself directly with the innovative open source leader - Rod Johnson, who is the SpringSource CEO and the founder of Spring Framework project, as well as his development team.

Noting that the SpringSource acquisition would help VMware “do a remarkable set of things for applications,” Maritz said during the call: “We are doing this for the potential for innovation here. We're talking about innovation, about doing things that no one else is doing.”

Indeed, SpringSource’s acquisition appears to be a well-thought out decision by VMware. Though SpringSource initially was providing a simpler way to develop Java applications, it has grown ever since – it acquired Covalent for getting the best Apache Web server and Tomcat software expertise; and added Groovy and Grails for scripting language framework, and Hyperic for Web application management software!