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“VMforce is the first enterprise cloud computing service for Java developers. This new service will provide enterprise developers with the powerful combination of the Java programming language, the Spring framework, and the Force.com cloud platform. With VMforce, Java developers will be able to build and deploy enterprise apps that are instantly social and available on mobile devices in real time, and that seamlessly leverage Force.com’s cloud database and pre-built platform elements, including reporting and analytics, search, web services API, and application security services. And all of these apps will run on salesforce.com’s trusted global cloud computing infrastructure.”
http://developer.force.com/vmforce

That is an impressive mouthful but what does it mean to me as a Technical Solutions Architect?  It means that I can focus on building applications instead of building environments.  Architects strive to build elegant solutions.  VMforce enables us to build elegant solution. 

When building enterprise java applications, we work directly with the marketing team, the technology team and the infrastructure team.  They need to have insight into the project and we need to follow their governance.  We work closely to size the database, size servers, order hardware, schedule the installation, map the network paths, configure the VLAN, install the OS, patch the OS, install the applications, patch the applications and finally deploy our code.  Far from elegant…

How does VMforce change this approach?  Much like Salesforce, VMforce will eliminate the need to do 99% of the setup steps detailed above.  This reduces our time spent on non-value add activities and creates elegant solutions.