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Oracle Kills Virtual Iron

Posted by kdawson on from the all-your-VMs-are-belong-to-us dept.

rhathar writes in with news that Oracle is killing off the products of Virtual Iron, a month after purchasing the company. Reports say that all but 10 to 15 staff were let go. The Reg article speculates that Oracle bought VI for its technology and considers its customers and partners expendable. When the Sun purchase finalizes, Oracle will be in possession of three separate virtualization technologies all based on Xen. "In a letter to Virtual Iron's sales partners, Oracle says it 'will suspend development of existing Virtual Iron products and will suspend delivery of orders to new customers.' One partner said, 'So basically, anyone that built their hosting infrastructure on VI... is now totally in the s–.'"

10 of 189 comments (clear)

  1. Yet another IT company gets to live my dream! by tjstork · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I would so love to be Virtual Iron, or anyone who got bought out like that. Geez, they buy me out, then tell me, that, I really am not allowed to work on it any more and can just take off for a few years, here's your millions of dollars.

    Yeah... SWEET!

    --
    This is my sig.
    1. Re:Yet another IT company gets to live my dream! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Yeah yeah. Great for the 2 or 3 guys on the top. Everyone else gets fucked though.

      Even if you have a small equity stake in a company that gets bought, the guys at the top will always cheat you out your share. Saw it happen many times during the first dot com bubble.

      What usually happens is the original owners have a handful of class A shares, and everyone else has class B shares. When the buyout comes around, the owners create and issue a billion (or so) class B shares, and dilute everyone else's interest. OR they simply vote with their (super voting power) class A shares and force everyone to sell the class B shares back at a reduced rate. Or they just sell the assets of the company, and not the company itself... then give themselves huge "bonuses" for making the sale.

    2. Re:Yet another IT company gets to live my dream! by e9th · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Such people do exist. Like this bank president. Yes, bank president.

    3. Re:Yet another IT company gets to live my dream! by dookiesan · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Thank you for saying what so many are afraid to (for fear of offtopic mod)

  2. Oracle is not IBM. by reporter · · Score: 5, Interesting
    After Oracle agreed to buy Sun Microsystems, many analysts claimed that Oracle intended to become another IBM by selling all components in the typical server room and by supporting those components with the same kind of high-value customer service.

    Well, the analysts were wrong. Without warning, Oracle just abruptly terminated a product line on which its customers may have built their entire information-technology infrastructure. This kind of approach to customer service is not how IBM treats its customers.

    Look at how IBM handled the sunsetting of OS/2. IBM issued a warning long in advance of ceasing sales and distribution of the product. Then, after the termination date, IBM continues to sell service contracts to support the product if a customer continues to need support.

    Hmmm. Maybe the time has come to short my Oracle stock.

  3. Don't forget VirtualBox by somenickname · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Though probably not for data center use, VirtualBox would add a fourth virtualization technology to their list. I'm more interested to see what they do with VirtualBox than what they do with all their overlapping Xen offerings.

    1. Re:Don't forget VirtualBox by erroneus · · Score: 3, Interesting

      VirtualBox is really for the desktop... or developing VMs for the enterprise, which is where I hope they go with it. I really like VirtualBox. It's free, does everything I need it to do and has replaced my use of VMWare Workstation nicely. If VMWare Workstation were free, I'd switch back.

  4. Re:Another reason why VMWare is the... by saleenS281 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ...VirtualPC is still around. But it was NEVER aimed as an enterprise virtualization solution, so I'm not sure why you would even bother to bring that up. I can only question your knowledge of the subject. Citrix Xenserver and Microsoft's Hyper-V are here to stay, and are VERY viable long-term solutions. In fact, more viable than VMware because they aren't a one-trick pony. Both company's can and will continue to make money if virtualization technology becomes a commodity, and with the ground MS is gaining with Hyper-V, that is a VERY real possibility.

  5. Re:Purpose of open software by jd · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It's also a good example of why being a company "likely to be around for a while" isn't worth a damn. Mergers and buy-outs happen, to small companies and large, and it renders all those nice platitudes as to why commercial products are so much "safer" to go with into meaningless drivel.

    --
    It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
  6. Re:Another reason why VMWare is the... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Are you smoking crack?

    Have you seen XenCenter?

    I have a pool of 80 Xen Servers, 900 guests, using xencenter to administer the lot, from anywhere.

    What happens when your single management server goes down, and you need to make urgent modifications?

    In testing, We have found Xen 25% faster than Vmware. same hardware, same taskloads.

    I give vmware 5 years. Max.