VMware: Another Netscape?

An anonymous reader writes " This CRN article states that Microsoft is about to buy Connectix and enter the server consolidation market. Connectix makes virtual machines products that compete with those of VMware. Quote: 'The technology will be integrated into the Windows code, sources said.' Will Microsoft be able to pull this one off? Will their virtual machines run operating systems other than Microsoft's?"

Comments

Apple's Switch?

[E1ven]

I wonder if this is part of an attack against Apple?

As those of you not familiar with the Mac Marketplace might not know, Connectix makes the popular Mac application Virtual-PC. Virtual PC allows Apple owners to emulate a complete PC enviornment on their Apple machines, at somewhat reasonable speed.

They seem to have had favorable licensing with Microsoft in the past, as they offer pre-installed images for certain OS systems, such as Windows XP, 2000, etc. While they do (I assume) pay MS for each license, it does help people to break the MS dependance gradually, as they can still run their old applications under emulation.

If they eleminated this crutch for people switching to apple, and then later discontinued Office... Apple would lose most of it's corporate market.

So- As useful as this technology is in the Server market (and keep in mind this is closer to Bochs than VMware), I can see MS execs encouraging this buyout to help keep control over the future of Apple.

Colin

This makes MS more attractive, I think

[astrashe]

This stuff is really cool, and I'm glad the industry is starting to wake up to the possibilities.

I see this as something that's more likely to popularize virtual computer technology, rather than something that's likely to eliminate our options. Obviously, I don't have a crystal ball, and I could be wrong.

I have a box that I use mostly to run VMware client OSs. Linux is my host OS, I have a very sparse and clean linux from scratch system set up on the box. I've got all kinds of stuff stashed away in various VMs.

The great thing about this sort of setup is the flexibility. The client OSs are basically just data files on the host os. If you copy the files, you've backed up the system, or cloned it.

You can move the files to other machines that have different hardware -- you don't have to worry about the sound and video card drivers.

And you can even replace the host OS without being too disruptive. I used to run redhat as the host OS, but I copied off the data files, set up my linux from scratch system, and brought the data files back in. Everything was fine.

The result of this is that the chains of dependency that exist between hardware, operating system installations, and applications become much less restrictive.

Another result is that it's trivial to play with new systems -- I don't run OpenBSD, for example, but everytime they could out with a new one, I install it, just to keep my hand in.

All this is, at bottom, is just a more flexible way of looking at OSs. An OS becomes a blob of data that's easier to move around from one hunk of hardware to another. And it's easier to keep lots of those OS blobs on a given machine.

It's a great way to deal with "staging" servers. You can take a production server (which is really a VM), copy it, and do whatever you want to the copy, without damaging anything. When everything is working properly, you can slide the new server into place. If you need to revert, you can just go back to the old data.

I suspect that this functionality is part of what MS is after.

Re:makes you wonder... / Palladium?

[mcc]

Microsoft would have no reason to want to stop VPC users buying windows, at all, no.

However, Microsoft also has no reason to want certain things about VPC to stay the way they are. For example, the fact it is screamingly fast. For a long time, one of the big bragging points mac users had was that we could run windows, *emulated*, at about the speed as a windows machine with half the mhz. (I don't know how current models perform.) That's really, really impressive insofar as emulation goes. Microsoft also has no reason to want VPC to continue to be as clean and effective as it has been.

What i am saying is that people don't come to VPC on a lark: it is an expensive piece of software, and people come to it becuase they need to get something out of it, usually to run some windows-only program. This means VPC's quality can suffer, and Microsoft will have no reason to consider this a bad thing-- at the moment, VPC has no serious competitors, so people will keep buying VPC.

Microsoft also has no reason *not* to stop Virtual PC from being able so cleanly, seamlessly, and easily to emulate, say, Linux. They have no reason to make it easy to run a non-MS operating system on your mac.

There is also no reason not for Microsoft to continue as they have and then, after a couple versions, slowly let wierd bugs, incompatibilities, etc, creep into VPC., until mac users *still* can run windows, but they only do so becuase they need to run windows for some reason-- because VPC has become enough of a pain that the PPC's wonderful talent for emulation no longer seems like much of an advantage over the x86.

Am i saying Microsoft is going to do this? Well.. no. In fact, i don't think they will, becuase macslash is reporting that apparently the VPC team will report directly to the MacBU, not to seattle. This means that they will continue, almost certainly, to make VPC as much a quality product as possible. So there goes that conspiracy theory out the window right there.

However, it does bother me that Microsoft is able to take big, important groups like Connectix and Softway (Interix) and buy them up just like that. Yes, they are buying them for apparently benign purposes. But what it seems like to me is that while Microsoft is not buying these companies so they can quash or disable them, they are buying them so that they can keep their eye on them. Potentially, something like Interix or VPC could become a big stepstone in some kind of major migration away from Microsoft. if Microsoft owns those companies, however, if it looks like such a thing is going to happen, MS can take steps to prevent it, so long as MS always keeps the quality of those companies' products so high that there never is a reason for a competitor to arise. Threat management.

This brings me to my question: how on earth is MS going to make Palladium work with VPC? Palladium becomes pointless unless those keys are kept secret, and if MS embeds those keys into a macintosh executable then extracting them will be trivial. So how is MS planning to make Palladium work in VPC? Are they going to require a PCI card with a palladium chip in it, or what? That would still toss out Palladium's concept of the secure keyboard-to-processor-to-monitor path, but it would at least keep the keys locked safely in silicon. Or, much more likely, are they just going to not let VPC run palladium apps, since the Mac OS is not "secure"?

So, here's a slightly more likely conspiracy theory. Perhaps MS [only partially of course-- i've no doubt they're mainly buying Connectix for the reasons they say they are] likes the idea of buying Connectix because it removes the risk Connectix will attempt to emulate Palladium within VPC? I mean, Palladium is going to be damned hard to crack, but if anyone at this exact moment in time has both the resources and the reason to crack palladium, it's Connectix or nobody. I really haven't the foggiest idea what Connectix was planning to do about Palladium, but they have experience at cracking closed systems-- they reverse-engineered the PSX. That expertise, and a few hours rented time with an electron microscope to pull on the Palladium's keys, and suddenly MS is no longer the sole source or vendor of their Palladium platform.

Would that have actually happened? I have no idea. But it certainly won't now. Maybe not a big deal, but certainly convenient for Microsoft either way, no?

Just like it's "convenient" that Bungie's excellent cross-platform game development library, rather than being sold off with Oni and Myth, is currently buried somewhere deep in the bowels of the earth..