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Microsoft Unveils Virtualization Strategy

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the getting-all-hyper dept.

billstewart writes "The Wall Street Journal reports that Microsoft will be announcing a virtualization strategy on Tuesday. Of course there's plenty of focus on the competition with VMware, including the obligatory reference to Microsoft's entry into the browser wars prior to cutting off Netscape's air supply. The pieces of the picture will include: an alliance with Citrix Systems, owners of XenSource; acquisition of privately held Calista Technologies of San Jose, which has software that speeds up the performance of applications running in a virtualized environment; and lower price for Windows Vista used on virtualized computers. Microsoft also reversed its earlier position and will now allow the Home Basic and Home Premium versions of Vista to run under virtualization. The company confirmed its plans to deliver its Hyper-V hypervisor within six months of the launch of Windows Server 2008 (betas available now), which is expected this quarter."

4 of 141 comments (clear)

  1. Scary? by ilovegeorgebush · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Well, I think there's something to worry about here. Bearing in mind Virtualization is the Next Big Thing ® right now, and businesses being quick on the up-take (I know my employer is a big fan, and we have ~5k employees and several large in-house development departments), I think it's going to be a bonus for a company to take a Virtualization offering from their primary OS supplier. Especially when you've got it in live deployments.

    Is there room in the market for MS? Or will they squeeze VMWare out? We'll soon find out...

    --
    ilovegeorgebush
    1. Re:Scary? by mrpacmanjel · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Is there room in the market for MS? Or will they squeeze VMWare out? We'll soon find out...
      HaHaHa!

      This is Microsoft we're talking about here - there is no room in the marketplace!

      On a serious note - virtualisation plays a major part in computing today, if Microsoft's os is going to be virtualised it will be done on thier terms and of course deeply integrated.

      If they want to do this that's fine... . . However, typically Microsoft's business practise is to try and 'remove' any competitive products from the marketplace - vmware had better be sharp because thier life is about to get more difficult.

      When an emerging market is noticed by Microsoft they seem to wait and see how it develops. If it appears to be profitable they wade in with thier own version and take it all even if thier own product is inferior - they can use thier OS as leverage (which has happend time and time again).

      Again, it's Microsoft's monopoly status that allows them to do this and I have a problem with that.

      If vmware are forced out the market at least there are open-source alternatives available which fortunately cannot be forced out the market (unless patent issues are raised?).
  2. Microsoft and Xen will kill VMWare by Psiren · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Microsoft will do what they always do, bring out something that is good enough for 95% of people, 95% of the time. They'll leave the finer points to third parties. It'll be good enough for most places running Windows only networks.

    There appear to be several virtualisation platforms appearing on the Linux side. I haven't used Xen myself, as when we were moving to virtualisation it didn't have the capabilities or support that VMWare did.

    Unless VMware gets its act together it's going to lose market share pretty quickly. The documentation is awful. Just. Fucking. Awful. There's tons of it to be sure, but it's contradictory, badly written, confusing and downright wrong in places.

    Ultimately I think Microsoft's hypervisor will become the default for Windows, and one of the others for Linux. VMware will become a niche product.

  3. Virtualize Linux by pesc · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Windows virtualization strategy is to embrace Linux in the server rooms by virtualizing it. This will degrade Linux from an operating system to an application stack. You will buy the OS from Microsoft, and the Linux application stack from Novell.

    Thus, Microsoft will extend Linux by providing better drivers to proprietary HW, nice managing consoles, etc.

    When this is sufficiently entrenched, the extinguish phase can begin when somehow Microsofts virtualized software stacks run better than the virtualized Linux stack.

    --

    )9TSS