VMware announced it’s acquisition of WaveMaker this morning. VMWare, of course, has the Spring portfolio as its application development group, and WaveMaker being an in-browser IDE for developing Spring-based Java applications looks to be a technological and business fit.
Technologically, VMWare is interested in seeing wider Java-based application development, esp. in the “line of business” area that the easier to use WaveMaker tool targets. As I so often quip, you don’t hear about Rapid Application Development (RAD) anymore, but the need for tools that allow more junior (or just cheaper) programmers to create applications hasn’t ever gone away. I discussed this with Chirs Keene last fall in this RedMonk interview:
More forward looking, WaveMaker is a good fit for a PaaS, having a sort of wiki approach to applications running in the cloud. As Rod Johnson says, “WaveMaker as a service will fit naturally with our cloud computing strategy, including Code2Cloud.”
Related to this is the recently announced Eclipse Orion project which is seeking to make an in-browser IDE. So far, it’s looking interesting – check out this webinar from a few days ago. And, of course, Bespin/Skywriter has had a lot of interest historically in this space.
More
- VMWare’s Rod Johnson outlines the reasoning behind the purchase.
- WaveMaker’s Chris Keene’s blog post on the topic.
Disclosure: VMWare and WaveMaker are clients, as is the Eclipse Foundation.
I heard Wavemaker was struggling, about to be shut down. Any insight into the economics of the deal, or was this just a way to keep WM from collapsing?
Anyone have an opinion about Vaadin (including Visual Editor) vs. WaveMaker?
Eric: no, I don't know any internals like that.