News around the web says that x86 virtualization pioneer VMWare is in trouble. A shakeup in leadership and a significant drop in share value beg questions about the future of VMWare and what it might mean for the entire virtualization industry.
I've used VMWare since the early days. Not the early, early days, but for many years now and I have to say that it is, far and away, the best virtualization product available at the moment. That being said... it is way too expensive.
VMWare's position is that the core virtualization component has become commodity technology at this point and that the real market is in the supporting technologies like virtual machine movement, replication, automated management, backups, etc. etc. etc. And they're right.
Given that, why is that core virtualization component so expensive? It costs a couple thousand dollars just to get into the game. Even the "Workstation" version is nearly $200.
Yes, they do have some free products that are available. But these products seem to be second-tier or last-rev versions and as such, don't give a good impression of the performance and reliablility of the current crop of VMWare products. Also, they kind of suck. Virtual Server is bloated and a hog, much more than Sun's VirtualBox or other competitors.
I want a VMWare player that can run multiple instances and create virtual machines. I don't want the extra cruft. I'm not going to run this "in production". I just need an excellent virtualization solution that I can run on my laptop or workstation that can be used as a "lab" environment that can give me an inkling of what the big-boy version is capable of.
The focus of the virtualization market is on the "big iron" x86 stuff, running hundreds of VMs on clustered servers with SAN attached storage with fault tolerant this-and-that and bells and whistles. Cool. The money and plenty of room for innovation is definitely in that space.
But, VMWare, please don't forget about us down here at the other end. There is need for easy and lightweight virtualization at the "prosumer" and workstation level as well. I'd pay (a bit) for an easy, lightweight, virtualization solution. Right now VirtualBox has that space, even though it's not yet feature-complete.
You need mind-share as much as market-share. If these "low-end" competitors gather more mind-share due to their accessibility by balancing cost, features, and usability, it will be harder for you to transform their low-end market success into your high-end product sales.
I've used VMWare since the early days. Not the early, early days, but for many years now and I have to say that it is, far and away, the best virtualization product available at the moment. That being said... it is way too expensive.
VMWare's position is that the core virtualization component has become commodity technology at this point and that the real market is in the supporting technologies like virtual machine movement, replication, automated management, backups, etc. etc. etc. And they're right.
Given that, why is that core virtualization component so expensive? It costs a couple thousand dollars just to get into the game. Even the "Workstation" version is nearly $200.
Yes, they do have some free products that are available. But these products seem to be second-tier or last-rev versions and as such, don't give a good impression of the performance and reliablility of the current crop of VMWare products. Also, they kind of suck. Virtual Server is bloated and a hog, much more than Sun's VirtualBox or other competitors.
I want a VMWare player that can run multiple instances and create virtual machines. I don't want the extra cruft. I'm not going to run this "in production". I just need an excellent virtualization solution that I can run on my laptop or workstation that can be used as a "lab" environment that can give me an inkling of what the big-boy version is capable of.
The focus of the virtualization market is on the "big iron" x86 stuff, running hundreds of VMs on clustered servers with SAN attached storage with fault tolerant this-and-that and bells and whistles. Cool. The money and plenty of room for innovation is definitely in that space.
But, VMWare, please don't forget about us down here at the other end. There is need for easy and lightweight virtualization at the "prosumer" and workstation level as well. I'd pay (a bit) for an easy, lightweight, virtualization solution. Right now VirtualBox has that space, even though it's not yet feature-complete.
You need mind-share as much as market-share. If these "low-end" competitors gather more mind-share due to their accessibility by balancing cost, features, and usability, it will be harder for you to transform their low-end market success into your high-end product sales.
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