VMforce at SpringOne – Day 2: VMforce Day

By Quinton Wall | Published: October 21, 2010

Yesterday at SpringOne was officially VMforce Day. We had an entire track dedicated to getting deep and dirty with VMforce. Ramnivas Laddad and I presented on Application Development focusing on how to manage inherent complexity, and lots of discussions on VMforce Use Cases.  Vmforce1

What is great about SpringOne is that this is a conference for developers—plain and simple. They don't care if you demo fails (the network went out in our session, and Ramnivas and I had to work some magic), if fact I think a lot of the developers prefer you to crack open terminal and start hacking. Hey, who am I to complain :)

One of the interesting aspects of talking about the Cloud at SpringOne is that you need to talk about what the developer experience will be: where do I look at logs, how do I move between environments, and what is the reason behind doing A or B. Just saying that "it's the cloud" isn't good enough. There has to be real compelling value. One such value statement is that, as a Spring Developer, I no longer need to worry about things like database scalability, web app redundancy etc. This is great news for the developer, as it means you can focus on what really matters to you—building cool apps. 

Hybrid Another important use case we discussed is the notion of hybrid apps. Yes, there is a lot of value building an app on VMforce and connecting to the Force.com database (for the reasons listed above for a starter), but the platform, as we know, provides a LOT of other services: reporting, search, security to name a few. Hybrid apps are those apps that combine the best of both words. Imagine a public Spring app with a private 'native' Force.com app for back-office functions, and you start to see the additional value of VMforce. Why recreate reporting, sync your data between two systems, and so on. I think these hybrid apps will certainly be one of the prevalent patterns.

 

 

If you want to follow more VMforce updates in real-time, make sure you check out the #s2gx tag on Twitter. 

tagged , , , , , , , , , , , Bookmark the permalink. Trackbacks are closed, but you can post a comment.
  • http://profile.typepad.com/plmcgrn Plmcgrn

    I know it’s early, but how is system maintenance handled? Theoretically, if VMforce is using the same data source (force.com), and force.com has a minimum of 6 hours planned downtime quarterly, plus the non-release service windows that typically follow those, how does VMforce handle that? Also, is VMforce 24/7, or is it just going to add to the pain we already feel in not have a 99.99+ environment? Does VMforce have a 100% available data source option?
    As an exec level view of this platform, many of us want to know how stable it is before we’d consider it for a production website. Companies don’t think regionally anymore, it’s global, or go home. We need to ensure the tools we leverage to run our business have the same mentality before investing in them.
    The technology looks very promising, and we’re very excited to see where it goes, but we won’t go cloud with the important stuff unless the cloud treats our stuff as important (important meaning 99.99+% uptime, daily).

  • http://quintonwall.com Quinton Wall

    Yes it is early, but these are fantastic questions. I have forwarded your comment to the PM team.

  • Tom Hoban

    Can anyone say when VMForce will be available for (1) development and (2) production?

  • Tom Hoban

    What do you mean by “early”? What was the original planned release dates for Beta? For Production? I can’t seem to find this anywhere.

  • http://quintonwall.com Quinton Wall

    You are going to have to stay tuned for release dates etc. They have not been announced at this stage.

  • Shishir Kulkarni

    Hi Can you please let us know, if the VMForce has been already launched?
    Iam trying to find an option/functionality in my current developer-org to enable the VMForce.
    Please guide.

  • http://www.123internetmarketing.co.uk/ website design southampton

    Very nice and good post you have published thank you for sharing. this is VMforce 24/7, or is it just going to add to the pain we already feel in not have a 99.99+ environment? Does VMforce have a 100% available data source option?
    As an exec level view of this platform, many of us want to know how stable it is before we’d consider it for a production website. Companies don’t think regionally anymore, it’s global, or go home. We need to ensure the tools we leverage to run our business have the same mentality before investing in them.

  • http://www.appshark.com Nagaboina

    is the VMForce lunched…?
    if so where can i found that………..?

  • http://quintonwall.com Quinton Wall

    Not yet.

  • Gaurav

    HI ,
    When is this going to be launched ?