1. Simplified Configuration - you will find you write much less code overall to configuration your applications. The code you do write is high-level and domain-specific, benefiting from smart defaults as well as rich validation and tool support.
   
2. Powerful AOP Unification - you may apply aspects that weave custom behavior before, after, and around your objects concisely with AspectJ while still benefiting from the simplicity of the Spring AOP runtime.
   
3. JSR 220 Java Persistence Archtecture (JPA) - to provide you choice in persistence provider implementation. Spring is the first to support JPA in both JEE and JSE environments with full portability between the two.
   
4. Asynchronous JMS Messaging - Message-Driven POJOs bring you lightweight asynchronous components for JSE environments with the choice of JMS provider.
   
5. JSR-168 Portlets - Spring Portlet MVC delivers a framework for developing JSR 168 portlets which includes integration with Spring Web Flow for orchestrating user interactions.
   

It is important to emphasize that Spring 2.0 provides backwards compatability with the Spring 1.x series. Compatability is critically important to our user base and we are committed to providing it.