Strategy: Why did VMware release its Microsoft 2005 benchmark?

This is my first post on ITtoolbox and an excerpt is here:

We all noticed how Oracle and Sun, in the shadows of Oracle's OOW event, announced their virtualization platforms. Both of these are based on Xen. Oracle came with its own story of how their VM's were 3 times faster than any other virtualization vendor. They also claimed that "the vendors who claim to have the only live migration on the planet" should stop claiming that as it too is becoming a commodity.

So why did VMware start talking about Microsoft suddenly? Simple, because Microsoft is readying its "bare metal" hypervisor and is planning a major strike on claiming back its "children" (read guest OSs) to run back to their "biological mom" (read MS hypervisor). Microsoft's base is massive and VMware is building its fortunes on its OS stack, Application stack (SQL Server, Exchange). Other bigger, mother-of-all apps like Sharepoint, that Steve Ballmer touted as the "next webOS" , too will be adopted by many. Especially there is a lot of talk going on in Educational circles to dump Blackboard kind of proprietary LMS programs and adopt Sharepoint as the shiny new system to collaborate. People are beginning to like it and we too are going full blast with the product.

Check out the rest on my newly launched blog on ITtoolbox!