Microsoft Providing Virtual Server Free

liliafan writes "In an effort to gain a market majority over VMware Microsoft announced it is giving Virtual Server away for free, additionally they will provide customer support for Linux. In a related move VMware have opened their partition file format to the community, aggressive and suprising moves in the virtualisation market."

Comments

wow, more echoes from the past

[yagu]

Unless I'm missing something here, this action on Microsoft's part is reminiscent of their "response" to Netscape when Microsoft finally recognized they had fallen way behind in an important market.

And, unless I'm missing something again, I think Microsoft still qualifies as a legally defined "monopoly", and this looks like leveraging their monopoly to unfairly skew market forces and competition.

And, unless I'm mistaken, this should be illegal.

(As an aside, interestingly enough, I was surprised to find Microsoft's virtual server technology STILL does not offer hypervisor services... to give some perspective as to how far behind that puts them in "getting it", I worked on virtualized VM boxes on IBM 360 mainframes in school back in the mid-70s! These systems were implemented with hypervisor. Wow!)

(Caveat: For those of you with home systems with XP Home Edition, this virtual server doesn't come free -- you'll need to flip for the $100 XP Professional upgrade.)

(Caveat II: I don't always completely trust stories from the Register as I find them a little over-the-top in their anti-Microsoft rhetoric. However I was able to verify the Microsoft Virtual Server IS available for free download.)

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[Anonymous Coward]

And, unless I'm missing something again, I think Microsoft still qualifies as a legally defined "monopoly", and this looks like leveraging their monopoly to unfairly skew market forces and competition.

And, unless I'm mistaken, this should be illegal.



I thought so too, but it also seems that VMWare started the price war when they started giving away VMWare Player. Microsoft may be able to fairly say that they are just reacting to pricing in the market,

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[killjoe]

It's a little bit different. In the netscape their aim was to "cut off the airsupply" of netscape by giving away a free browser. In this case they are simply reacting to the fact that RedHat, Novell, IBM etc can now offer XEN out of the box with better performance and scalibility then anything MS has.

What's great about this announcement is that MS paid lots of money for virtual server and now they are forced to not only give it away for free but also provide support for it. That's millions of dollars down the drain for MS, money that could have gone to research, lobbying, advertising, PR, or even given back to the shareholders. Money down the drain, bad for MS, good for the rest of the world.

Is all this legal? Well probably. To be honest in a very real sense it's dumping. No company without a monopoly and monopoly profits could have afforded to spend that kind of money on virtual server and then give it away AND support it. The only reason MS can do it is because they have two established monopolies and they can use the obcene profits they make from their monopolies to fund money losing schemes like this (and virtually every other piece of software they hawk). In a pure market economy this could not work.

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[SilentChris]

"Unless I'm missing something here, this action on Microsoft's part is reminiscent of their "response" to Netscape when Microsoft finally recognized they had fallen way behind in an important market."

Actually, it's more of an act out of desperation. VMWare started this was a few months back by releasing one of their server products for free. Arguably VMWare is the monopoly -- Microsoft is nowhere near the company in terms of marketing penetration or mindshare.

"And, unless I'm missing something again, I think Microsoft still qualifies as a legally defined "monopoly", and this looks like leveraging their monopoly to unfairly skew market forces and competition."

Microsoft's monopoly is with Windows, which is installed on 90%+ of the world's machines. What got them in trouble in the browser wars (and again with media players) wasn't the fact they were giving software away but they bundling it with Windows.

Microsoft isn't bundling Virtual Server with Windows. In fact, it would make little sense, as very few Windows users would have a need for this software. If any when they release it with Longhorn Server (which is their plan) then it could be seen as unfair competition.

"And, unless I'm mistaken, this should be illegal."

You're mistaken. Again, dumping software doesn't get these companies in trouble -- bundling it does. If you applied your logic to every company, Apple should be in trouble for iTunes, Sun for Java and Macromedia for Flash.

"(As an aside, interestingly enough, I was surprised to find Microsoft's virtual server technology STILL does not offer hypervisor services... to give some perspective as to how far behind that puts them in "getting it", I worked on virtualized VM boxes on IBM 360 mainframes in school back in the mid-70s! These systems were implemented with hypervisor. Wow!)"

At this point "hypervisor" is a more a marketing term than anything. You don't need a hypervisor to have a successful VM. 360 mainframes were able to do it because their CPUs were designed to. The x86 architecture hasn't lent itself very well to hypervisors, which is why most companies that do VMs (including VMWare) don't use one on the platform. Intel is finally releasing a desktop chip that will support virtualization. Don't blame the software companies for lackluster hardware support.

"(Caveat: For those of you with home systems with XP Home Edition, this virtual server doesn't come free -- you'll need to flip for the $100 XP Professional upgrade.)"

Considering it's called "Virtual Server", why would anyone running Home edition try to use it? It's clear that the product is intended for administrators and developers, hence the OS requirement.

"(Caveat II: I don't always completely trust stories from the Register as I find them a little over-the-top in their anti-Microsoft rhetoric. However I was able to verify the Microsoft Virtual Server IS available for free download.)"

Um, congrats? You're able to use Google. Very nice. Not sure why this statement should be considered a caveat.

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[timeOday]

My perspective is as a user of VMWare products under linux hosts. For me, the harm of Microsoft's "gift" is obvious! I don't want VMWare to be driven under and be forced to use Windows as the host OS.

VMWare has recently started giving away some valuable products too (Player and Server), which perhaps clouds the issue. But the fact is, VMWare has to make money on their virtualization software, and Microsoft does not. They can use the Windows tax to subsidize virtualization for as long as need be to ensure that, eventually, Windows is the only "choice."

What kind of free?

[LunaticTippy]

Is this free as in beer or free as in screensaver?

I'm guessing it isn't gonna be free as in Free.

Re:Aggressive and surprising?

[Krach42]

More like desperate. They're only doing this because Xen's eating their lunch.

No, it's because the Virtualization market is heating up. And it's likely VMWare that's causing Microsoft to sweat, not Xen, or any F/OSS alternative.

You used to see this back in the day when local, and ma' and pa' shops roamed the earth. For instance, one bakery would have a monopoly in the area, when a new one would pop up, and start undercutting the other's prices. Then they'd retaliate, and you'd end up with a flying storm of lowering prices, until one of them were forced out of business.

At this point, the price would be rock bottom, and the winner, would gradually increase prices until they were making a good profit again, but generally it worked out well for the community that was shopping there.

Of course, the whole problem comes in that to startup a bakery you don't need billions of dollars and years of development to produce your product. Microsoft is now sitting in a practically unchallengable monopoly position. When monopolies hit this point, it's my opinion that controls should be leveraged to ensure that they're not gouging their captive audience.

Re:My submission about VMWare was rejected....

[DAldredge]

/. did cover it.

http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/02/03/132 0216

Damn I am defending /. the world must be coming to an end.

I LIKE PICKLES!

Re:Stifling Innovation?

[TrancePhreak]

VMWare Player and now Server have been free for a while. So in all actuality, MS is just adjusting costs to market normals.

Re:Goodbye VMWare

[omega9]

Why? I don't understand the motivation to switch just for switching's sake. VMWare Server was announced as a free product before Virtual Server. If you're running ESX and plan on moving to Virtual Server because it's free then you also plan on losing a lot of functionality.

If you've already got an infrastructure built in VMWare, how does it make sense to spend the labor leaving it for no good reason?

Re:Why on earth...

[caffeinemessiah]

Here's a reason why (although there are many others): I recently built a spanking new box and ordered FC4, Debian and Gentoo from FrozenTech. FC4 x86_64 had trouble with the video, FC4 x86 worked fine but kept freezing every 20 minutes with no useful log messages. Debian x86_64 didn't like my wireless drivers, including the native src drivers from the manufacturer. Debian x86 also had problems with my wireless card.

Solution: if you can't get drivers for your hardware, use VMWare to abstract the Windows drivers to Linux. My wireless card looks like a regular 100mbps Ethernet card to Linux, which needless to say works great. With a decent processor and 2gigs of ram, I'm very, very happy with FC4 under VMWare at 1900x1600.

If there's one thing that Windows is unbeatable at, it's adapting proprietary drivers to Linux!