VMware pricing continues to frustrate the industry

Some important questions before entering 2008:

• Is VMware taking too many things for granted of its first movers role?
• Will that work for VMware in this fast age of aspirational computing and rising consumerism?
• Did it really help Oracle "eventually"? I mean Microsoft's SQL Server has grown since its version 1.0 to a very robust solution, going to SQL 2008 CTP version which you can download today?
• What about the vendors like Virtual Iron, XenSource and other offerings? Why sign those 2 year ELAs when you do have parties that do just about what needs to be done?
• What else do the clients/customers expect in the next two years? Heck analysts are too struggling to figure out and making all kinds of balderdash predictive work.
  
• What about the complementers? (I have seen and heard enough complementers who are not really happy with the way things are going. Sorry I am not at a liberty to name any one of them)
  

I don't think that people should just focus on the cost, there are also other issues that may not help VMware in this new age. We are indeed not in the 90s. But if people do want do the 90s comparison then I am afraid that we may see another Netscape story.

To be fair to the innovation: I still think that we also need to look at this product. We would never have had VMware in the spotlight if some firms were seriously working to deliver a product that could reach across all depths and breadths. Vmware managed to do that.

Cost is not the only thing here.

Anyways here's Alex's psot that triggered this blog reaction:

Part of that may be VMware's relative newness to the enterprise software game. After going through the ELA negotiating process with VMware, "I got the impression that they haven't written too many of these things," he said, citing difficulties with seemingly simple problems, like getting existing "onesie, twosie" licenses the firm had purchased to expire co-terminously. "It's been a struggle to get them to do this." The way VMware models its direct sales organization is another bone of contention. Unlike other large vendors like Hewlett-Packard Co. and EMC Corp., which provide the source with a single representative for the entire company, multiple VMware reps all serve this company, assigned according to geography, and fight one another for the company's business.

"I just want a single point of contact at VMware," he said plaintively.

With the lack of mature virtualization alternatives on the market, the source said he is comfortable signing a two-year ELA, but no longer. In the next three or four years, other players may emerge with credible enterprise stories. "As soon as the critical point hits, people are going to switch [to other virtualization vendors] if they continue treating people this way."

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