Comments on: CEO out at VMware; former Microsoft exec in

Virtualization software maker abruptly announces the departure of founder Diane Greene, installing former Microsoft executive Paul Maritz as the new CEO. Also, full-year revenue will be below expectations.

[humanssssss]

How can VMWare survive when KVM (Kernel Virtual Machine) alternative is doing the job that it can do? And not only that, companies like Sun, Microsoft, and many others have their own virtualization software.

I recently was asked by a Fortune 1000 company to determine what to use for their virtualization needs. They immediately suggest to me to that VMWare seems to be the right direction to go. After a few presentations and talks, they got hook on KVM. There were many folds benefit. The most important was the functionality to achieve what they need. The second was cost. Since virtualization is simply running their SaaS in an image file, they don't see the needs to choose one over the other. Then when it comes to cost, KVM beats VMWare hands down. KVM is free and VMWare is like $1k to $2k per processor per year in subscription or something like that. In an economic slump, companies always look at the bottom to ensure they can survive the rainy days ahead.

[rrod182]

VMWare can survive because it's still the best. KVM, ha, ha, crap. If you want OS use XEN not some hacked up QEMU. Eitherway, last I checked VMWare GSX Server is still a free download. VMWare is point and shoot, costs significantly less to deploy. Get your facts straight before you let the steam roll out of your trap.

Sun VM, hahaha, won a few battles, but still losing the war. M$ has had constant issues with their hypervisor, it's been on again/off again for years. They also licensed their source to XEN so they could build a better hypervisor. M$ just wants to sell Windows, so they don't stomp out competition outside the OS, anyone that can help sell windows licenses, and VMWare does plenty, is going to be just fine.

If you don't believe me check out Citrix. M$ has been doing the same thing as them for years and they are still a growing billion dollar company.

I think whatever you are smoking in your pipe dreams has gone to your brain buddy.

[humanssssss]

VMWare is going to die. It's like trying to sell IIS versus the competition Apache. You just can't. The fall is coming soon than u think.

[rrod182]

VMWare can survive because it's still the best. KVM, ha, ha, crap. If you want OS use XEN not some hacked up QEMU. Eitherway, last I checked VMWare GSX Server is still a free download. VMWare is point and shoot, costs significantly less to deploy. Get your facts straight before you let the steam roll out of your trap.

Sun VM, hahaha, won a few battles, but still losing the war. M$ has had constant issues with their hypervisor, it's been on again/off again for years. They also licensed their source to XEN so they could build a better hypervisor. M$ just wants to sell Windows, so they don't stomp out competition outside the OS, anyone that can help sell windows licenses, and VMWare does plenty, is going to be just fine.

If you don't believe me check out Citrix. M$ has been doing the same thing as them for years and they are still a growing billion dollar company.

I think whatever you are smoking in your pipe dreams has gone to your brain buddy.

[robinwauters]

There was something in the air before the US woke up:

http://virtualization.com/news/2008/07/08/emc-vmware-spinout/

Our take on Diane Greene?s departure:

http://virtualization.com/news/2008/07/08/diane-greene-vmware-paul-maritz/

[Penguinisto]

VMWare survives for two reasons: First, it has a metric ton of tools to make the admin's job easy. Second, it's rock-solid. Until you can overcome those (even MSFT's Viridian/Hyper-V can't currently compete with it), you've got a very large hill to climb if you want to capture VMWare's marketshare. .
Something else to consider: VMWare is seeing competition because the enterprise tool sets are, well... not cheap. At all. MSFT's Hyper-V is very liable to run up across the same problems. If Xen ever gets a decent tool set, and keeps it (and the tools) open-source, they stand to gain the best of all worlds. .
/P

[humanssssss]

There are companies like Surgient that already make the management of virtual machines much easier than VMWare tools.

You can use KVM to run VMWare image. There's no need to VMWare except for running on desktop and doing a bunch of installation and optimization. Then when you're done, you copy the image onto Linux KVM server and deploy to thousands of servers at no cost per processor cost.

I've done this. To say KVM otherwise is horsesheet.

[Penguinisto]

...can KVM match VMotion, or even do something akin to Virtual Clustering? Performance trending? Can I pack 16-20 of them (and run almost all of them) onto a single HP DL-380?

These are only a couple of some very serious questions you're going to see when you try to sell KVM on an enterprise level. Until you can answer "yes" to them, and then say "even better than that" to each, you're liable to not get very far.

[supersknews]

As a layman, my understanding of VMWare?s triumph is just opposite to today?s cloud computing. Their core concept was to simulate a given hardware into multiple computing units. But here, cloud computing is more about integrating all given hardware to one giant computing unit. What is Martiz planning to do? VMnoWhere!!! ;-p

[Saurabh Kaushik]
http://saurabhkaushik.wordpress.com/