Virtualisation heavyweight VMware has acquired privately owned SpringSource to unleash a new Platform as a Service (PaaS) go-to-market strategy.

VMware snapped up the web application development and management vendor for about $362m (£220m) in cash and equity plus the assumption of approximately $58m of unvested stock and options.

Already approved by SpringSource’s stockholders the deal is expected close in the third quarter of this year.

Combining both vendors’ products, VMware plans to build new enterprise applications and run and manage these in the same vSphere-based internal or external clouds. These can also host and manage existing applications.

Market watcher Forrester Research expects the market to expand to $15bn by 2016.

Paul Maritz, president and chief executive officer of VMware, said: “Today’s modern computing environments are moving to an application and data-centric world powered by state-of-the-art virtualised and cloud computing platforms.

“The combination of SpringSource and VMware capitalises on this shift and places us right at the intersection of the most important forces in the software market today: virtualisation, modern application frameworks and cloud computing.”

Rod Johnson, chief executive officer of SpringSource, said: “VMware has led the modernisation of datacentre infrastructures through innovative virtualisation and cloud architectures, providing customers with cost savings, agility and choice.

“The SpringSource team and community are committed to revolutionising the way companies build, run and manage applications. By combining forces, I am confident that we will be able to deliver a set of truly remarkable solutions that dramatically simplify enterprise IT.”