Sky.com Uses SpringSource Supported Groovy and Grails to Increase Developer Productivity by 400 Percent

November 11, 2009 8:00 AM EST

Leading Entertainment and Communications Company Accelerates Release Cycle and Improves Functionality and Productivity Using Groovy and Grails

SAN MATEO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- SpringSource, a division of VMware, Inc., (NYSE: VMW) and the leader in Java application infrastructure and management, today announced that the U.K.'s leading entertainment and communications company Sky.com has increased the productivity of its web development team by 400 percent using Groovy and Grails. SpringSource is the company behind Groovy and Grails technologies. Groovy and Grails provide a streamlined development framework, and like other SpringSource-supported products, they dramatically simplify how companies build, run and manage Java applications. Groovy is one of the most popular alternative languages for the Java Virtual Machine. Grails is a rapid web application development framework based on Groovy and Spring.

Sky operates a multi-channel television service with almost 10 million customers, representing one third of households in the U.K. and Ireland. Sky's multiple websites deliver entertainment news and other content to customers, attracting millions of unique users each month.

Sky.com developers rely on a content management system (CMS) to constantly update its home page with articles, images, videos, feeds and navigation to other Sky websites. Prior to using Groovy and Grails for its homepage CMS, Sky ran into limitations with the existing CMS solution because of the complexity of the technology and the time it took for developers to publish new pages. After the development team switched to Groovy and Grails, Sky.com gained speed, flexibility and productivity without sacrificing application performance.

"Groovy is so much simpler to use than other technologies which makes it easier to get applications up and running faster," said Jon Mullen, Sky.com ScrumMaster. "With Groovy and Grails, we are able to release new applications into production weekly, as compared to every six weeks with our previous tools."

Groovy and Grails deliver the following business results to Sky.com:

    --  Greater Productivity -Groovy and Grails allows Sky.com to create a new
        feature within a week, when it used to take a month or more.
        Additionally, Groovy and Grails streamline how the development team
        modifies website applications. Other platforms have to be restarted
        every time a change is made.
    --  Fast Response to Business Needs - Groovy and Grails allows Sky.com to
        quickly respond to business needs and to turn ideas into functionality
        on the home page.
    --  More Innovation and New Functionality- The speed and flexibility of
        Groovy and Grails empowers Sky.com to try innovative new features, see
        how end users respond to the features and then push them to the main
        page.
    --  Rapid Developer Ramp Up- A developer can become productive immediately
        using Groovy and Grails because they provide language and framework
        extensions based on the familiar Java language and popular application
        architectures.
    --  Economical Team Resources- Given how easy Groovy and Grails are to
        learn, the Java development team has reallocated resources to support
        other training efforts.

"Groovy and Grails enables developers to be more productive because the language is dynamic and the application architecture uses the most popular and well established components like Spring," says Guillaume Laforge, staff engineer and head of Groovy development at SpringSource, a division of VMware. "Developer productivity, faster time to market and the flexibility to adapt applications to new business needs has helped to drive the rapidly increasing adoption of both Groovy and Grails."

About SpringSource

SpringSource, a division of VMware, Inc., (NYSE: VMW) and the leader in Java application infrastructure and management, provides a complete suite of software products that accelerate the entire build, run, manage enterprise Java application lifecycle. SpringSource employs the open source leaders who created and drive innovation for Spring, the de facto standard programming model for enterprise Java applications. SpringSource also employs the Java and Web thought leaders within the Apache Tomcat, Apache HTTP Server, Hyperic, Groovy and Grails open source communities. Nearly half of the Global 2000, including many world's leading retail, financial services, manufacturing, healthcare, technology and public sector clients are SpringSource customers. For more information visit: www.springsource.com.

SpringSource and VMware are registered trademarks and/or trademarks of VMware, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the United States and/or other jurisdictions.

Forward-Looking Statements

Statements made in this press release which are not statements of historical fact are forward-looking statements and are subject to the safe harbor provisions created by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such forward-looking statements relate, but are not limited, to, future levels of customer adoption and deployment of SpringSource products and solutions. Actual results could differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements as a result of certain risk factors, including but not limited to: (i) the duration of negative economic or market conditions; (ii) delays or reductions in consumer or information technology spending; (iii) competitive factors, including but not limited to pricing pressures, industry consolidation, entry of new competitors into the virtualization and application infrastructure markets, and new product and marketing initiatives by competitors; (iv) our customers' ability to develop, and to transition to, new products, (v) the uncertainty of customer acceptance of emerging technology initiatives; (vi) rapid technological and market changes in virtualization software; (vii) changes to product development timelines; and (viii) our ability to attract and retain highly qualified employees. These forward looking statements are based on current expectations and are subject to uncertainties and changes in condition, significance, value and effect as well as other risks detailed in documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended June 30, 2009 which could cause actual results to vary from expectations. VMware disclaims any obligation to update any such forward-looking statements after the date of this release.

    Source: SpringSource

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