Virtualization: VMware compares its maturity with that of Microsoft's

Reza has some pointers for all the skeptics and doubters in the industry:

This announcement (which, it should be reiterated, is just the availability of the beta version) is not altogether surprising. Microsoft was always going to attempt to get into this industry in earnest, but it is an industry which we have created. Don't forget, a few years ago x86 virtualisation as pioneered by VMware was still faced with its doubters and sceptics who thought this was a doomed attempt to breathe life into an old mainframe computing concept. Over the last few years many of these nay-sayers have dropped by the wayside as they have seen virtualisation truly become a mainstream technology. We have now been doing virtualisation - and only virtualisation - for 10 years.

Of course, then there are the inevitable questions about how VMware's technology compares with Hyper-V in terms of features and pricing. As with any comparison, this is about comparing apples with apples. On the features side, we truly believe that customers are now looking well beyond server consolidation as the main driver for going virtual. It is the advanced management features built around the hypervisor which will be key factors in what customers decide to purchase. If a customer is just interested in partitioning server hardware we offer a great product - VMware Server - for free!

Microsoft is not the real contender, it is the Xen start-ups who are taking the virtualization to the next level. Sure the maturity of VMware products is where they will plug into by "default" (for now) but the more we see products from Citrix maturing, the more this scenario will expand. They are also bound to create an eco-system of their own! And not just that, some startups have some really crazy ideas and are poised to take the throne in the next year or three. In fact I spoke to one of them last night!

See the rest of Reza's post.