What Microsoft didn't say at its virtualization event

Mr. Virtualization (aka ESG analyst Mark Bowker) called me Monday from the big Microsoft virtualization gala. From his description it was vintage Microsoft: company senior managers, partners, demos, and multimedia presentations. I kind of wish I was there for the demonstration of Buddy Guy's virtual guitar playing on a Gibson Flying V. (You had to be there.)

Microsoft's Bobs (Kelly and Muglia) kicked off the day with keynote presentations around customer case studies and Microsoft's technology vision. But what's most interesting to me is what Microsoft didn't say. According to Bowker, Microsoft hardly mentioned its recently released hypervisor (Hyper-V). Instead, the folks from Redmond focused on the virtualization environment highlighting best practices, management, implementation, and future growth.

To me, this strategy is very telling. One to two years ago, it was all about the hypervisor, and VMware ruled. Now it is about building and managing data centers and desktops built on any hypervisor. How will users deploy virtual objects? How will they manage and secure them? These are the real issues.

The hypervisor wars are over now. The real virtualization winners will be those that provide the best supporting services and technologies. Microsoft is demonstrating that it gets this.

Jon Oltsik is a senior analyst at the Enterprise Strategy Group.