SpringSource Acquires Covalent Technologies

Acquisition Brings Together Two Open Source Market Leaders to Enable a Simpler and More Powerful Enterprise Application Infrastructure
 
San Mateo, Calif.—January 29, 2008—SpringSource, a leading provider of trusted open source software for building and deploying mission-critical enterprise applications, today announced it has acquired enterprise open source leader Covalent Technologies. The acquisition brings together two open source market leaders and addresses widespread demand for a simplified application infrastructure based on the Spring Portfolio and Apache projects such as the Apache Tomcat application server, one of the most popular open source technologies in the world today.

Covalent, based in Walnut Creek, California, is the leading provider of support and services for Apache Software Foundation (ASF) open source projects. Covalent’s large customer base of over 400 organizations includes more than 50 percent of the Fortune 500 and 20 percent of the Global 2000. The Spring Portfolio of applications has been downloaded more than four million times and is the dominant platform for enterprise Java applications. With the addition of Covalent, SpringSource will offer a single source for products and services to rapidly develop, test, deploy and run enterprise applications using the Spring Portfolio and ASF projects, including Apache Tomcat, Apache HTTP, and others.  According to BZ Research, the Apache Tomcat application server is used at 64 percent of corporate enterprises worldwide.

“There is a major, tectonic shift happening in the application infrastructure market. Enterprises are increasingly choosing a combination of Spring and Tomcat and other open source solutions which are extremely powerful, yet far more lightweight, modular and cost effective.  These solutions are being chosen over bloated and complex legacy Java platforms.  In fact, at a recent Spring conference, a recent survey showed that over 93 percent of enterprises running Spring also run Tomcat,” said Rod Johnson, CEO of SpringSource. “Covalent has an outstanding reputation and track record both within the open source community and among the hundreds of top organizations that rely on them for Apache project support.  The SpringSource and Covalent combination is poised to lead the industry’s rapid migration to simpler, more flexible application platforms.”

The CEOs of both companies announced the acquisition today and discuss the rapid rise and adoption of Spring and Tomcat on their respective blogs, found at (http://blog.springsource.com/ and http://blog.covalent.net/roller/covalent/).

“This is an exciting time for the enterprise open source software market. The number of open source technologies being adopted by our customers is rapidly increasing,” said Mark Brewer, CEO of Covalent. “The combined company brings together the key committers and experienced support professionals that organizations require to rapidly and confidently meet their open source architecture requirements.”

"With the increasing acceptance of architectural alternatives to legacy Java EE implementations, enterprises have been accelerating adoption of packages like Spring and Tomcat," said Stephen O'Grady, principal analyst with RedMonk. "Thus a consolidation of the primary commercial backers of each is both logical and synergistic."

Covalent CEO Mark Brewer joins the SpringSource management team as vice president and general manager of SpringSource’s new Covalent business unit. The financial details of the transaction are not being disclosed by either company. 

In related news, SpringSource announces a free webinar, “Tomcat and Spring: The Perfect Match,” taking place on Wednesday, February 13. SpringSource principal engineers will cover specifics such as configuring Tomcat to scale Spring applications, simplifying web application creation, monitoring and managing Spring applications deployed in Tomcat and configuring Tomcat to enable Spring-driven load-time weaving and the benefits from doing so. To register please visit http://www.springsource.com/web/guest/webinars.

About Covalent Technologies
Covalent Technologies, founded in 1998,  is the leading provider of products and services for Apache Software Foundation (ASF) open source projects, namely the Apache Tomcat Application Server, Apache Geronimo Application Server, Apache Axis Web Services Framework, Apache Roller Blog Server, Apache ActiveMQ Message Broker, and Apache HTTP, the world's leading Web server. Covalent is the trusted source that Fortune 1000 enterprises turn to when migrating to open source and when deploying new open source initiatives. Covalent’s customers include many of the world’s leading companies including among others: SBC, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, British Telecom, NASA, Intel, Royal Bank of Scotland, PNC Bank, and Bear Stearns. Covalent is proud to be one of the most distinguished supporters of the Apache Software Foundation (ASF), the dominant community for usable open source, and the open source community in general. For more information, visit www.covalent.com.

About SpringSource
SpringSource, formerly known as Interface21, is a leading provider of trusted open source software for mission-critical enterprise applications. SpringSource created and sustains the development of the Spring Portfolio, which includes the Spring Framework, the leading Java™ and Java EE™ application framework. Through the Spring Portfolio of products, SpringSource has helped hundreds of organizations, including many of the world’s largest financial institutions, retailers, manufacturers, healthcare, technology and public sector clients, build, test, deploy and run mission-critical enterprise applications.  For more information, please visit http://www.springsource.com.