Think about it: Does it really matter to Microsoft if a server running Windows is physical or virtual? If a company buys ten servers running Windows Server, then Microsoft gets revenue for ten licenses of Windows Server. If a company buys two servers running VMware ESX Server but has ten guests running Windows Server, Microsoft still gets license revenue. So what does it matter to Microsoft, as pointed out in this article:
Customers will be using VMware or Virtual Iron, for example, and they will buy Windows and other Microsoft software to run on those virtual machines.
A VMware Virtual Infrastructure deployment does not preclude the use of Microsoft software; in fact, it often accelerates the deployment of more instances of Windows. How many times have you read about “virtual server sprawl� I would wager that the majority of those sprawling virtual servers are still running Microsoft Windows. So why is Microsoft fighting so hard in the virtualization space?
Why try to create your own hypervisor to compete with VMware’s wildly successful hypervisor in ESX Server? Why not partner with VMware to make your products even better when running on VMware’s virtualization layer? Why not build a management console that can manage VMware’s virtualization technologies better than their own management console? I mean, if the real challenge is the management of VMs, why not tackle that?
Why not “embrace and extend�
Tags: ESX, Microsoft, Virtualization, VMware
-
It may be because people inside Microsoft think this is a zero-sum game: where if someone is “winning”, someone else has to lose. They may also want to control the stack so that they can direct things where they want to take them. (Just a guess.)
-
Truly no one outside Microsoft knows for certain, and likely very few inside Microsoft actually know. Microsoft’s competitive nature is well-known, so it’s probable this plays a large role in the situation. Your guesses are very astute!
-
Microsoft is fighting so hard because VMware threatens to make Windows superfluous. All an OS does is provide the environment for apps to run on hardware. If the hypervisor becomes commonplace, I would expect to see more OS-level functionality move to the hypervisor as it develops; at a certain point Windows will serve no purpose and will be replaced by some kind of stripped-down API container for apps to run in.
But it’s the hardware manufacturers who really need to worry–if VMware presents all hardware to the OS as a vanilla x86 box, then there will be little advantage to innovating on the hardware, and hardware will be even further commoditized. Especially if the h/w manufacturers must wait for VMware to write the drivers for the new hardware.
-
I don’t know why the hardware vendors AREN’T opposing VMware more than they are, although some have theorized that as the hypervisor becomes more commodotized (and the value moves into the management and manipulation of virtual machines), then the hypervisor may actually become part of the hardware. Who knows?
-
Not only are they not worried, but some companies such as IBM, Dell, and HP are going to start shipping their servers with a firmware embedded build of VMware. To my thinking it appears that they want to tie the two together so tightly, that you would be a fool not to see the economic plus.
-
My take on this question:
http://richardbrand.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!B6BABFBEFD65985F!273.entry
-
Richard,
The link you placed in your comment doesn’t seem to work. Do you have an alternate URL?
-
Slowe, sorry – something strange seems to have happened to the URL I posted.
Try http://www.richardbrand.co.uk , then find the post titled “VMware – The Threat to Microsoft” – it is currently the most recent post.
-
Richard,
OK, got it–apparently, the site doesn’t like Camino (Mac OS X-based browser). It loads fine using Safari.
I agree with your assessment–the introduction of administrators with Unix/Linux skills increase the likelihood that the “all Microsoft” days are over, and that is something Microsoft wants desperately to avoid.
-
Richard,
The issue is that the web server is serving the content with a MIME type of “application/xhtml+xml”, but the content is actually plain HTML.
So a standards-stringent browser (e.g., anything Mozilla based) will try to render the page as XML/XHTML. Since the content is HTML there’s a parsing error, and standards dictate that you stop parsing XML when you encounter an error.
Using another browser masks the issue because most browsers don’t try to be as stringent as Mozilla when it’s in “standards mode”.
Site Sponsors
10 comments
Comments feed for this article
Trackback link: http://blog.scottlowe.org/2007/06/04/why-is-microsoft-fighting-so-hard/trackback/