After spending time at VMware and Cloud Expo last week, I believe that VMware’s lack of full backing for Cloud Foundry software is holding back the entire PaaS market in the enterprise.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot of momentum in PaaS despite how very immature the market is. But this momentum is in pockets and largely outside of the core of software development in the enterprise. CloudFoundry.com might be moving along, but most enterprises don’t want to run the bulk of their applications in a public cloud. Only through the Cloud Foundry software layer will enterprises really be able to invest. And invest they will.
PaaS-based applications running in the enterprise data center are going to replace (or envelope) traditional app server-based approaches. It is just a matter of time due to productivity and support for cloud models. Cloud Foundry has the opportunity to be one of the winners but it won’t happen if VMware fails to put their weight behind it.