RTFM's Comments RSS Syndication from SeekingAlpha.com http://seekingalpha.comuser/259595/comments http://seekingalpha.com/article/94785-notes-on-vmware-s-special-shareholder-meeting?source=feed#comment-251252 251252
The "hypervisor" is the component that is getting commoditized, in part due to features being added to processors (which make it easier to write a hypervisor that works, but not necessary a good one). As with any software industry, it's a matter of establishing a lead over competitors and working to maintain that lead as they catchup to certain advantages. The lead is often defined in terms of features, but in this area also applies to performance, stability, correctness, ecosystem of complementing products, etc.

A competitor like Microsoft will only care to have their VM product run on their OS (i.e., Windows), and focus on making sure their OS will work well in their virtual machines (while not caring so much about other OSes like Linux or Solaris). It took MSFT 5 years after acquiring Connectix to ship a competitor to VMware's high-end hypervisor, and it still lacks important features (e.g., VMware's VMotion, which lets you transition from running a VM on one physical computer to running on another physical computer with sub-second downtime of that VM). Other aspects are subtle but important. For example, being able to take a VM that was running under one version of a VM product and then upgrade to a newer version of the VM product and still be able to use that VM without losing information. VMware generally allows you to do this, while MSFT has not so far (even between the RC and RTM versions of hyper-v). This gets to be a big deal with you have 1000s of VMs, which is also why more revenue is coming from other areas like management software than from the core hypervisor products.

In the Macintosh product space the competition is closer to VMware's heals, in part because VMware got a late start but also because the main competitor sacrificed quality and stability to get where they're at.]]> Thu, 11 Sep 2008 05:21:52 -0400
The "hypervisor" is the component that is getting commoditized, in part due to features being added to processors (which make it easier to write a hypervisor that works, but not necessary a good one). As with any software industry, it's a matter of establishing a lead over competitors and working to maintain that lead as they catchup to certain advantages. The lead is often defined in terms of features, but in this area also applies to performance, stability, correctness, ecosystem of complementing products, etc.

A competitor like Microsoft will only care to have their VM product run on their OS (i.e., Windows), and focus on making sure their OS will work well in their virtual machines (while not caring so much about other OSes like Linux or Solaris). It took MSFT 5 years after acquiring Connectix to ship a competitor to VMware's high-end hypervisor, and it still lacks important features (e.g., VMware's VMotion, which lets you transition from running a VM on one physical computer to running on another physical computer with sub-second downtime of that VM). Other aspects are subtle but important. For example, being able to take a VM that was running under one version of a VM product and then upgrade to a newer version of the VM product and still be able to use that VM without losing information. VMware generally allows you to do this, while MSFT has not so far (even between the RC and RTM versions of hyper-v). This gets to be a big deal with you have 1000s of VMs, which is also why more revenue is coming from other areas like management software than from the core hypervisor products.

In the Macintosh product space the competition is closer to VMware's heals, in part because VMware got a late start but also because the main competitor sacrificed quality and stability to get where they're at.]]> http://seekingalpha.com/article/94785-notes-on-vmware-s-special-shareholder-meeting?source=feed#comment-251114 251114 Wed, 10 Sep 2008 21:25:19 -0400