Virtualization game: What's next?

Saw this blogpost from the 450Group and got me thinking , when I read this:

So why should Citrix and XenSource abandon aspirations of virtualization with Linux servers, which continue to grow? Will VMware up its Linux game seeing an open opportunity in virtualization with the open source OS? Projects such as OpenVZ and Virtual Box, as well as their commercial backers SWsoft and innotek, aren’t likely pausing much to ponder such questions since they are more focused on moving ahead on virtualization and VM management for Linux and Windows and, most importantly, getting it into customers’ hands.

I am predicting a criss-cross, musical chairs game. VMware is watching XenSource is watching Microsoft. So what should we do? Where is he planning to go? Where can I put my R&D budget in?

Googlogic : "Forward Thinking, Detour ridden, Continuity Development" Model

I have always compared VMware to Google, the way they do what they do. How they gauge the markets and how they know when to execute. How to gauge now what will happen i the next 18 months? I'll let my feeble brain analyze some market movements and developments here and attempt to prognosticate :

• Enterprize Moves to Linux: Dell took a solid step, under Michael Dell's leadership, to seriously push Linux desktop/servers. This demands a "solid integrative mind". Not that others don't have it. Michael Dell , like other hardcore business men, knows when its time.
  The industry has waited long enough for this move and Dell will "commoditize" it, others have solutions already, but I would watch Dell, if I were you.
• Hypervisor Dance: It is there on the Server market but it is far from pervasive, just 5% of the market is capitalized, more is yet to come. But hypervisors will be again move into a lot of devices, Dell has been the first party to bring it to the masses.
• Detours: VMware indeed will go more into the Linux market than imagined. Windows is hot today, but what about in 2015. Well will see a totally different market. Windows market, what analysts think where XenSource is totally focused on, may become a place where "everyone is exiting" (Ok it is not that dramatic, I mean it more figuratively). In any case there will be serious Linux and Mac adoption across home users and in the corporate worlds. But how will that take place? VA, of course! So you get it, VA is the vehicle.
  
• VA or Virtual Appliances: This will be buzz-word today, but mark my words, it will be the default norm. And that will happen in the coming 18 months. This will gradually displace the OS and be literally deployable on the bare metal.
• Repond appropriately to a continuosly "Consolidation Driven" market: This will continue to be the trends, despite the fact that many organizations might make mistakes of over spending, there are always exceptions, but many will streamline and follow suit to adopt the GGI, "Green Grid Infrastructure". The beauty of the GGI is that it will be invoked, literally from a grid, so intuitive that it will be extremely prohibitive to any "over-spendable" activity, don't we all want that! That we will need to comply to such "business technology energy emission directive", which will be state driven, will be a norm.
• Roadmap towards a Utility Driven Computing: Really, it's so cool. There are bigger names, that have attempted the grid computing initiative, it really amazes me how VMware has gradually cleverly maneuvered itself while initiating tectonic shift.

Google has shown in the past, how web was much more than we thought. The market lost faith in the web; big firms crushed young initiatives; and fear crept in the industry, but still the yound and the daring moved on in their garage. Times have changed since, today start-ups are defining the world as we see it. Why else do you think the "Think-Research-Acquire-Swarm-ReThink" cycle is what the companies are going for. Some firms have done some strategically sanest moves in that direction, others have also done similar moves but more aggressively. It is those, who would have done this complex math in their head time and time again, who will come out as true winners. The virtualization game will get more intense in the coming years, and it is time for all of us to join the game!