Spring goes five star with Integration announcement

The company's Spring Experience drew over 400 enterprise developers, architects and senior managers, CTO Adrian Colyer (right) told me. All perfectly writable-offable.

Such meetings are a key part of Spring's marketing. It follows customers to where they want to go, sending executives to user group meetings and conferences around the world, where they explain to prospects how to use the software. Colyer is a popular speaker with the rare gift of being able to explain complex technologies in simple English.

Colyer is also leader of the AspectJ project at Eclipse, which is based in Ottawa, and is a member of the Eclipse Architecture Board. He was named one of the 100 "top innovators" by MIT's Technology Review in 2004. He has earned a nice weekend.

SpringSource's enterprise Java platform is becoming essential middleware, added Mark Fisher, who led the Spring Integration team, and the new software can "support multiple endpoints for a single service, as well as routing and transformation of the data content.

"New users will be able to grasp the concept. It really increases the level of what Spring can do. More things can be configured, and it automatically maps endpoints."

This doesn't mean SpringSource is taking integration proprietary. The company says it "will remain committed to interoperability with existing enterprise integration solutions and standards."

But by making itself more essential to enterprise customers, the company brings in revenue that lets it put its own meeting at the Westin Diplomat in Hollywood, over a December weekend.

And it may be more than just a weekend. Colyer Fisher lives in Boston, and a fierce nor'easter is going to be hitting that city just when he's due to fly back Sunday afternoon. (Note: Colyer is a Brit. Sorry. Got confused in the interview.)

I assume the company will spring for an extra day. Besides, the Spring Integration release is dated Monday.