Hyper-V R2 Released: VMware’s Paul Maritz walks a thin line as Microsoft closes in!
By Tarry Singh at 31 August, 2009, 11:50 pm
Will he be able to pull off the trick. We VMware be able to make Microsoft’s Windows irrelevant? I seriously doubt that will happen in the next 10 years and seriously doubt if VMware will be the one to do it. Obviously they expect Google to upstage Microsoft and I’m sure with some minor exodus of some Google employees to VMware, they might be wondering to make the whole OS ballgame shift a bit lower to the hardware and more towards the hypervisor.
Well, again will that work? I’m not so sure as other Windows-friendly hypervisor vendors such as Xen and Hyper-V –Microsoft’s own homegrown hypervisor — is about to only strengthen the Windows legacy. Well we will have a totally different windows and in a couple of years the OS will become irrelevant but Microsoft may still have taken to the Clouds.
This is where VMware knows that it is no more in the lead, clearly Cloud is for every one to own. OS+Apps = Appliances as they are called will be more in the game and there will be tons of Cloud providers with all sorts of nested cloud setups [nested = cloud providers riding on top of other cloud platforms to bring services to you] and the ones who really don’t care of worry much about the privacy wil go with the one that is best and closest to you.
So in the Cloud, suddenly the hypervisor will become irrelevant! Who would care what hypervisor you’re running. VMware knows that very well and is doing everything to balance out the ESX sales and see other growth directions. Good thing is: VMware can again start playing as a start-up and that I am sure VMware maybe able to do it better than other competitors. The only difference of redoing the start-up dance is that there are many guns pointed at you. A normal start-up is a the guy at the corner doing some stuff and we still don’t know what he really means, even his VCs don’t really know but still have faith in the new future he/she will be building out. Today VMware stands at the point where some branding practices are not really working well; subtle price hikes are not being taken well in this bad economy; acquisitions wren’t that easy and converting them in money-generating vehicles is not taking place this far and most importantly with Microsoft really gearing up with its Windows 7 and Hyper-V R2, it might be very difficult to do the start-up dance.
VMworld is here and somehow the VMware Go and other announcements are not really making that much of an impact, smaller virtualization firms are opening support for Microsoft and pointing to the SMB will mean that the battle will get intensive as hell. Microsoft has been a very comfortable second-mover in the enterprise, a cool game where you can let a start-up go and do the mojo– something very similar to where we see SalesForce doing although it might be lost in the large usurper we know as Oracle– VMware is in a much tighter spot as EMC and Cisco come into the lock. Cisco is playing the game fairly as it is selling UCS boxes for all OS, not just VMware and I’m sure soon when Hyper-V will be pervasive (Microsoft would hope to believe and see that happening in 2010), Cisco will be on Microsoft’s turf selling for its OS. Cisco merely doesn’t care, it just wants to sell its boxes. The point I’m making here is that letting/allowing VMware go after the enterprise is what Microsoft has gotten used to in past decades.
People look at Paul as the former MSFT warrior who slayed the “Netware by cutting of its air supply” but Microsoft will generate enough anger and hatred and surely some bunch of executives who have stronger track record or even new cowboys will go after VMware they way Pau land team went after Netware. Games change; players change and the rules change as well. Both parties have a fair chance and one thing we know is for sure: Hypervisors are becoming a commodity, look around yourself and every vendor seems to have it in its arsenal.
VMware hopes to go to the cloud and is luring the enterprise into it and I’m sure some enterprise providers will go for it but this time it will be hard to ignore the other players and conversations will start. Customers are already talking about Microsoft and evevn though there is no market footprint it will only slow down the process of getting into a VMware only Cloud OS, there will be many OSs [read Hypervisors]. The Hypervisor is the new OS and ESX is not the only one.
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