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Microsoft’s .NET framework, introduced at the start of the last decade, performs a similar function to Spring in that it abstracts functional code from the deployment environment. The framework allows programmers to use any of a number of languages, but provides a common library of technical components.

“What we always wanted to do with .NET is to give programmers a common environment that would work in any computing scenario that might develop,” explains Mark Taylor, developer and platform evangelist for the software giant.

So when Microsoft launched its own PaaS offering, Azure, earlier this year, it made sense to make .NET the associated development environment. “When we were putting Azure together, we wanted to make sure that we didn’t require developers to come up with a new approach [to programming],” Taylor explains. “And the thing that most developers who target the Windows operating system are most familiar with is .NET.”

Until recently, the ability to transfer both skills and applications between environments was a unique and considerable advantage for the Microsoft cloud offering, says Ried. “The beauty of the .NET environment is that if you write some basic .NET code you can deploy it on your desktop, in your data centre or on Azure – you can basically execute anywhere,” he explains, although he adds that this is not necessarily true for more complex .NET code.

This advantage, which unchecked could well have skewed the development of the cloud industry, has been balanced out by VMware’s cloud partnerships, as enabled by SpringSource, Reid adds. “With VMware owning SpringSource and doing these partnerships, Spring is becoming a very strong player, both on premise and on cloud, and that’s why I think the balance between Java and .NET is now re-established.”

Locked in the cloud

There are differences between Microsoft’s .NET-powered cloud and the Java cloud of VMware and its partners. An important one is that Spring is open source, unlike .NET. “The fact that Microsoft’s programming model is proprietary, and its deployment model is proprietary, is a bit of a danger for them,” says SpringSource’s Johnson.

This is not just fighting talk; Forrester’s Ried agrees that the perception that one might be locked into the .NET / Azure / Windows stack might deter some development organisations. “What developers hate more than anything else is a lock-in, and until now PaaS offerings have been a double lock-in – you are locked into the programming model and the deployment environment.”

Spring releases developers from that potential lock-in, Ried explains, in two ways. “Spring solves the deployment lock-in because it allows all varieties of deployment – on premise, on desktop and on the cloud. And it solves the programming model lock-in because it is open source; if somebody buys VMware and decides to kill it, the users can just take the Spring code and carry on with it.”

These are not trivial discussions, as they may well inform enterprise organisations’ choice of PaaS provider. According to Ried, while most individual developers will focus exclusively on Java and .NET, most large development organisations will employ capabilities in both. They are therefore presented with a choice as they make greater use of the cloud.

Ried adds that the technologies that rise to prominence in these early days of the cloud may have a powerful influence on the future of computing. The efforts of a number of industry bodies have so far failed to produce a set of open, common standards for the interoperability of cloud systems, he explains, despite considerable demand.

“People are just using what the large vendors do, such as Amazon’s application programming interfaces (APIs), as de facto standards, “ he says. “Maybe the combination of a VMware virtual machine and Spring will become the standard Java container for the cloud.”