The Death of VMWare

Something that isn't popular at all with VMWare engineers, salespeople or anyone else who's bought heavily into VMWare technology is my theory that VMWare is headed quickly to relative obscurity within about 2 years.

What with the drumbeat of virtualization technologies all available for free or low/no cost, including VMWare Player, the VMWare Server product, Microsoft's Virtual Server R2 Enterprise and of course Xen 2.0/3.0, VMWare's for-pay services and software seem increasingly expensive and unnecessary for a growing class of users.

Don't get me wrong, I have used (and paid for religiously) VMWare products ever since V1.0, and it's been a great ride, I couldn't imagine doing what I have done with modeling networks, running multiple OS instances for testing, running p2p software on crappy old Windows instances for spyware isolation, without using VMWare's products.

That said, I am predicting that unless VMWare does at least 2 things in the next year, there will be a LOT of VMWare ex-customers that stumble out of the back end of VMWare in about 2 years looking dazed and wondering what they will do now that VMWare's world domination is over...

Item 1: They should alter or update their Virtual Center software to include support for management of Xen systems. The biggest hitch for most people is that VMWare was first, but they aren't Xen friendly, often throwing FUD about with alacrity that Xen is not ready or good enough, but it's like having dinosaurs declare that asteroids will never hit the earth, orthat the coming Ice Age isn't ready for prime time.

Make no mistake, when Xen is JGE (Just Good Enough) it will be implemented in large numbers, and it's almost there for the less intrepid, and fully there for the more adventurous and scarred of sysadmin veterans.

Item 2: Develop a strategy around using Xen or opening Xen VM's or something that keeps VMWare valid in an increasingly Xen world out there. VMWare's virtualization is pretty heavy and resource-intensive, what with the full emulation of the entire physical machine, while Xen is much friendlier to the resources of the host machine.

Again, this is not designed to get blog hits, it's something that is very valid in my environment, people who are heavily invested in VMWare WILL be needing help with what to do next, IF VMWare doesn't remain relevant for the future, either near future or long.

Ross