ck2008

Troubled VMWare's Lowest Close Ever

bm1087, I find it odd that you would Use Novell and Netscape as arguments to support an argument for maintaining a competetive advantage over Microsoft. If I recall correctly, both were "Light Years Ahead" of the comparable Microsoft offerings in 1994. As for Microsoft creating an OS based on a Linux Kernel, Why would MS even consider such a move given that they already have the underlying 64 bit kernel to server 2008. You should read up on the server core installation option of Server 2008; I don't know if it's leaner than an ESX distribution, and it's also known that Hyper-V is not nearly the mature product that ESX is, but I do know that the guys at MS can and will rebuild the Server 2008 Kernel to make it work even better with their Vitualization technology.
I'm not saying that VMWare is going away tomorrow, but they do have a serious threat to contend with and those "Light Years" you speak of are rapidly disappearing. If you don't believe me, ask the folks at Novell, Palm, and Netscape.