It’s been just over a year since VMware and Salesforce.com announced VMforce. According to an unnamed Salesforce spokesperson, “VMforce is currently in private beta and we are planning a broader distribution later this year.”
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A year in beta is a geological age in the time scale in which VMware and Salesforce operate.
Last year I watched as CEOs Paul Maritz of VMware and Marc Benioff of Salesforce.com jointly announce what was called the “trusted cloud for enterprise Java developers.” Here are the pictures that prove that something existed, at least a year ago.
I distinctly remember the “you got peanut butter in my chocolate, you got chocolate in my peanut butter” exuberance at the event. Yet today, the VMforce.com website stands like a brightly painted, unoccupied building. The last blog update on the site is from shortly after the announcement a year ago. With life signs this faint, I think it’s worth asking what will happen with VMforce?
It seemed like VMforce was going to be a way for enterprises to use existing Java development staff to create applications using company data that was created in Salesforce using VMware’s SpringSource Java development products. A year later, it looks more and more like Salesforce and VMware have other ideas.
If beta participants can share their experiences about applications they’ve built in VMforce, I would be interested in hearing about them.