Mary Jo Foley, the brain behind the All About Microsoft blog, raises an interesting question today. Amid Microsoft’s big virtualization push, she openly wonders if the biggest threat facing Microsoft is now VMware rather than Linux. The VAR Guy chewed on that a bit, and delivered the following answer.
Mary Jo’s onto something. By striving to control virtualization, Microsoft hopes to ensure Windows Server and Hyper-V Server are at the center of the universe for virtualizing other platforms. If Microsoft needs to coexist with Linux, the software giant at least wants to play the dominant role in the discussion.
The worst-case scenario for the folks in Redmond involves VMware, Red Hat or Citrix sitting at the center of the virtualization universe. That’s why Microsoft has hedged a bit to partner up with Novell. And yes, Microsoft and Novell are actually coordinating their virtualization efforts — despite skeptics who think the Microsoft-Novell relationship is nothing more than empty marketing hype.
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So Linux is Microsoft’s …
Well, at the rate execs are running from VMware I hardly doubt it is a threat to anybody.
KVM will be the winning solution by merit of potential and speed of development. Nothing even comes close to KVM in that regard.
So Linux is the right answer IMHO.
PS. Xen is old new IMNSHO. ( No speed, not a lot room to grow and won’t be mainline Linux for years.. I guess it will be dead before Linus takes it. )
I would think that when people start to understand the reality behind the buzzwords they will mostly turn away from virtualization. It has its niche for small underutilized servers or in development/testing scenarios but as an all-in solution it intruduces much more problems and costs than it solves. My own daily dealings with virtualization have been a very eye opening and humbling experience.
By the time Microsoft is about to enter the virtualization market for real its already tapped and the plug is out the bottom.
VMware virtual machines are just another platform for Microsoft to sell licences to. Sure microsoft dont like vmware, as the dont want another player in the toybox.
Linux is not a threat to Microsoft the open working techniques which produced Linux do spell the end.
@Mintra: MSFT doesn’t like companies that provide software layers sitting between hardware and applications. Ultimately, that’s VMware.
Without another operating system, like Linux, on which to run VMWare, VMware is no threat at all to Microsoft.
.
Run VMWare on Windows and it compliments Windows, run it on Linux then it’s a threat.
I don’t think it’s either one. Years ago Microsoft was concerned about “competing against free” and at that time, Linux was as free as it got. Today, the biggest threat against Microsoft is Google, the big daddy king of free. Google is spending billions each year on datacenter infrastructure so that they can push out apps like Google Apps, followed by computing power on demand. If apps are hosted and web based, now you just need a browser. Coincidentally, Google just released their own browser. Why? Because Google sees a world where nothing starts with “MS” and everything starts with “G”.
I think Microsoft knows this…and he who controls search, controls not only controls advertising revenues but can also influence the minds of the masses. This is why Microsoft tried to buy Yahoo!…so they could have a fighting chance. this is why immediately after Microsoft’s offer, Google decided to be friends with Yahoo! Because they know what Microsoft was up to and they want no part of it.
Linux has no real money behind it…not yet. My guess is before too long, we’re going to see a Google OS. Whether it’s Linux or not, ask me then about the biggest threat to Microsoft.
In the meantime, you’ll notice all of the hosted apps that Microsoft is putting out there. Hosted Exchange, Hosted Sharepoint…there’s not much money in that for the reseller. We once got to sell it, deploy it, support it…that’s how we made our living. How mcuh room is there for the reseller in the “hosted direct” model? Not much…but it’s poised to compete against Google.
@Rory: The VAR Guy loves your closing paragraph about the “hosted direct” model. Our resident blogger hears that VARs hosting open source apps on their own (namely SugarCRM and various open source email) are doing quite well. They’re not reselling someone else’s service. They’re hosting and adding value on their own. But it requires deep expertise in the open source code, in most cases.
@tracyanne: The VAR Guy politely disagrees. Ultimately, virtualization software (VMware and others) will sit directly on the hardware. So the stack becomes hardware, virtualization, then operating system. MSFT doesn’t like that scenario. At all.
VAR Guy, tracyanne disagrees, with VMWare, or any other virtualisation technology sitting directly on the hardware merely gives Microsoft a chance to sell more licenses for a single box, so there is no real danger for Microsoft in that respect.
The real danger is if customers purchase the virtualisation technology and install Linux on the virtual machines. So virtualisation doesn’t change the dynamic all that much. It’s a short term problem, in that customers may choose to run the current VMs on top of Linux, until full virtualisation on top of the hardware become ubiquitous.
Tracyanne: The VAR Guy says we can agree to disagree, and thanks for the healthy debate and for reading this site.
Google should fly under the radar. Why risk making competitive enemies at this point until the public is more aware that MS products are junk. Too many are still in the MS nursery.