Interface21 becomes SpringSource

Engineering | Rod Johnson | November 19, 2007 | ...

We're changing our name. This week, Interface21 will become SpringSource.

As we have built the company, Interface21 has earned a reputation for exceptional products, thought leadership, outstanding people, professionalism and top quality support and services. As we continue to deliver all of those things, we believe that changing our name will help our company bring them to a wider audience.

When I founded Interface21 in 2004, I had to pick a name. I believed Spring to be the future of enterprise Java, and "Interface21" reflected those feelings—the framework for the 21st Century. Now we’re well into the 21 Century. Spring has proven to be more successful than I could have dreamed, and has become a de facto standard for enterprise Java. It's also growing in popularity on the .NET platform. Millions worldwide have downloaded Spring Portfolio products. All the major Spring committers work here.

We’ve evolved naturally to SpringSource. We are not making a fuss about it. It just makes so much sense for us to use the name that’s so close to what people naturally (and almost accidentally) use. It's simply confusing to have a name that's unnaturally distanced from the product we created and drive. Our tagline has always been "Spring from the Source," making it easy to see what the new name should be. I've always loved the way the water associations from "Spring" made "Spring from the Source" so natural.

Our name change underlines the depth of belief in our product and the evolution of our business model. Back when we started, we were a consultancy that produced a successful software product that gave it competitive advantage. Our primary service was high-level consulting. Having chosen to be self-funding at that time, it was natural to bootstrap the business that way, and I'd probably do the same again. Today, we've grown into a software company with a product that's central to many of the world's critical business applications. We're supporting some of the largest companies in the world in using that product, and we are a trusted partner for the enterprise.

We will continue to be involved in products besides the Spring Portfolio. AspectJ is an example of another important project we lead. There will probably be more. But since 2004, Spring has grown in importance--and scope, through the Spring Portfolio--to become central to modern enterprise Java architectures. (This is not just our opinion: it's borne out by recent research from Gartner, Forrester and other analysts.) We live and breathe Spring, and it's central to us too.

Our customers can expect to see all the good things they’ve experienced from Interface21 continue. And we look forward to helping many more organizations be more successful through our products and services.

For the Spring community, we'll continue to do what we've always done: work as hard as we can to make the Spring Portfolio the easiest, most flexible and most powerful platform for the enterprise. We believe that with Spring 2.5 , Spring Web Flow 2.0 and many more products on the way, there's more than ever to be excited about...

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