One of the rites of passage for becoming an enterprise technology provider is pre-testing and certifying that your offerings work as advertised for specific configurations, or when it interoperates with software or platforms popular with your installed base. SpringSource, caretakers of the Spring framework, is crossing that threshold now by certifying their newly-released, Eclipse-based Spring Enterprise Edition. Initially, they will certify against the obvious targets: IBM WebSphere Application Server 6.1; BEA (soon Oracle) WebLogic Application Server 10 (not yet the 10.3 preview release); and JBoss Application Server 4.2 (not yet the 4.3 release).

And as part of the price of being open source, they are also going to guarantee IP indemnification as well, akin to practices that Linux providers like Red Hat and Novell are already offering.

Obviously, this is all a step up from support, which SpringSource subscribers have already been getting. 

To recap, Spring Enterprise Edition includes the new Eclipse-based Spring IDE plug-in for building Spring applications. It comes bundled with the clever Mylyn task manager, and the AspectJ developer tools, which provide a relatively non-invasive means of attaching properties or functionality to software without having to mess with underlying core logic. For instance, if you want to turn logging on only during periods of peak activity, aspect-oriented programming tools like AspectJ enable you to layer the function without having to change your original code. It also includes SpringSource Performance Suite, which includes run time monitoring and management technology from Hyperic, plus special extensions for optimizing deployment on Oracle RAC (Real Application Clusters).

The goal of offering certified configurations is to provide a level of assurance that enterprise customers expect from core software providers. It’s a market that prizes stability, and with it, assurance that the software will work as advertised. Providers like IBM deliberately ratchet back the frequency of releases because their customers do not constantly want to be in product upgrade cycles. And in fact, Red Hat does same, keeping Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) on a fixed release schedule, while the bleeding edge, unsupported Fedora community offerings are constantly updated.

So it was surprising when COO Neelan Choksi told us that with the new certification program, subscribers would get more frequent releases. Somehow, that sounded liked a mixed message. He clarified it by saying that SpringSource is serving two audiences: those who have software in production, and those who are developing and want assurance that patches and new releases work. “We will make it very clear as to which bug fixes apply to development features, and bug fixes are for production features,” he responded.

Nonetheless, we wouldn’t be surprised if SpringSource refined its release and certification policies down the road.

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