Microsoft aims at VMware's virtualization lead

Software introduced Thursday considered first major effort to cut into lead held by VMware, which just went public in the hottest tech IPO in years.

The story "Microsoft aims at VMware's virtualization lead" published September 6, 2007 at 9:06 AM is no longer available on CNET News.

Content from Reuters expires after 30 days.

[zaznet]

Limited to Servers?

Whoever wrote this article has not been keeping up with the virtualization market or VMware's efforts. VMware has maintained and repeatedly improved their VMware Workstation product keeping up with advancements in their VMware Server.

VMware Virtual Desktop Infrastructure, VMware ACE, VMware Player and recently released VMware Fusion (for Mac) are all non-Server targetting products. They address more than the issue of running an older version of Windows on the latest version of Windows.

VMware Player aims to be an "Appliance" package. Create a VM for a specific task such as running a personal firewall, your word processor, browser or other application. We are talking about an application not an OS. Microsoft is still thinking of virtualization as an OS (licensing for an OS makes Microsoft Money).

Perhaps the only good thing I can see here is that Microsoft might see value in longer term support for their older windows versions. If Microsoft plans to support virtualized Windows XP, that may extend the life of XP.

VMware still has a strong and maintainable lead. Microsoft doesn't seem to have a better vision for the future of virtualization based on this article. I have not heard of a single feature in the new Microsoft product that hasn't already existed for years on VMware.

[J_Satch]

Even from a server-centric point of view...

...the article seems flawed in assuming that virtualization is a threat to Microsoft because it allows running of *nix OSes alongside Windows. It seems not have have occurred to the author that many installations will simply run multiple Windows servers virtually.