Now that it’s gone to public beta, I can talk about my evaluation during the private beta of SpringSource’s tcServer.

I only spent a few days with it, but I came  away impressed. SpringSource has put together a very solid product that should appeal to many.

tcServer is actually a combination of Tomcat 6, wrapped in much JMX goodness, and Hyperic’s  management console, with tcServer-specific plugins, re-branded as “AMS Server”.

Spring’s tagline for the product is “The Tomcat You Know, the Enterprise Capabilities You Need”.  Indeed, this combination gives production shops the ability to run their apps on the same lightweight server that their developers know and love, and to have Operations Management capabilities and professional support, complete with SLAs.

Other vendors offer similar capabilites, but many are extremely expensive, and few are as light-weight as Tomcat. Some other vendors also offer similar capabilites on top of Tomcat, but it’s hard to beat SpringSource’s experience with Tomcat.  I discussed price with the folks at SpringSource, and it looks very attractive. I’m not sure if they have announced the pricing publicly, so I won’t give it here.

I could go on at great length about all of the product’s capabilities, but I’ll spare you here. If you’re really interested, let me know, or go download the beta, and try it out for yourself!