On Thursday at the SpringOne 2GX developer conference, VMware announced with Google the general availability of the first in a series of technology collaborations to make enterprise software developers more efficient at building, deploying and managing applications within any cloud environment on any device. The collaborative projects that will be available in the next two weeks include Spring Roo and Google Web Toolkit; Spring Insight and Google Speed Tracer; and SpringSource Tool.

"Together, Google and VMware enable enterprises to develop and deploy rich Spring Java applications across multiple clouds and devices," said Rod Johnson, SVP, application platform division at VMware. "Today we have reached an important milestone where these modern applications can run smoothly within the firewalls of a company's production datacentre or in a trusted provider's cloud environment."

The general availability of these projects represents the first in a series of technology collaborations to enhance cloud portability across multiple clouds and devices. The next collaboration projects will focus on even broader mobile application support and accessing data in the cloud, as demonstrated today by the ability to deploy a SQL-based Spring application on Google App Engine for Business.

"Developers are looking for faster ways to build and run great web applications, and businesses want platforms that are open and flexible," said Vic Gundotra, Google vice president of developer platforms. "By making deployments of Spring Java applications on Google App Engine using Google Web Toolkit generally available, developers can deploy Java applications in production environments of their choice while leveraging rich web front-end across multiple devices."

AudioBox.fm, the cloud-based music service that lets users upload their music collection and access it anywhere, has added the iPhone/iPod touch to its list of supported devices through a native application.

Previously, iPhone users could only access AudioBox via Mobile Safari, a bit of a kludge since the QuickTime Player plugin effectively takes over the phone’s browser. There’s also existing support for Android, a nifty HTML5-based browser version and a Windows desktop app, with the Italy-based company touting itself as an open platform to store a user’s media library in the cloud, giving them “access to uploaded media from anywhere through the highest number of devices possible.”

Of course, with Apple’s expected launch of its own cloud-based music offering based on the company’s purchase of Lala, AudioBox is just as well to emphasize ‘open’ and multi-platform support. On that note, I’m told that the company wasn’t even entirely sure if its iPhone app would be approved by Apple for sale in the iTunes App Store to the extent that it delayed developing advanced features such as ‘offline’ playlists in case it turned out to be a waste of time.

As it stands, the iPhone app supports streaming of a user’s music library over WiFi and 3G, multitasking/background support thanks to iOS 4, and unlike AudioBox’s Android app, playback can start and resume from any point in a track.

In the earliest stages of SaaS, flexibility posed a major obstacle to companies accustomed to programs designed specifically for their needs. However, as SaaS applications become more customizable and vendors lowered prices, companies are willing to sacrifice completely flexibility due to all the other benefits of SaaS, according to Internet Evolution.

Even with improvements in customization, SaaS applications are not as flexible as previous programs. The popularity of companies like Salesforce.com, however, shows that organizations have learned ways to alter their operations around the strengths of quality SaaS applications.

"Traditional customization has been a black hole for most organizations which has too often failed to achieve its business objectives. SaaS solutions are becoming increasingly flexible. While they will never be as customizable as legacy applications, a growing number of organizations are willing to sacrifice infinite customization for reasonable configuration capabilities," Jeffrey Kaplan, an analyst for ThinkStrategies, told the news provider.

Companies planning the move to SaaS must account for a slight loss of some flexibility, though. Info World recently reported that the biggest reason companies fail with SaaS and other forms of cloud computing is that do not plan for their move properly.

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