Virtualization State July 2008

Future Reality Solutions

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Since I last wrote, I have had the opportunity to preview technologies from Microsoft, Xen and VMWare. While all are intriguing, nothing I have seen is game changing. Microsoft's Hyper-V has little more than the same abilities as Xen but is still hampered with a number of the drawbacks of the Windows Operating System. Their technical sales folks are more than happy to try to sell their inability to live migrate ala VMotion as a feature saying that it "allows the remote system to guarantee stability." That is about the biggest crock of crap I have ever heard. It seems to me that they are working hard to spin the inefficiencies of the MSCS cluster base that underpins some of this functionality. While they are also able to install on a stripped down version of server, it is still the same kernel and services that will be used by hackers to design worms, viruses and rootkits. I do expect a number of small businesses to leverage this solution however due to the fantastic price of free "with Server 2008". What is yet to be seen is Microsoft's management tools and whether they will do a good job of integrating other hypervisors.

Xen is the product that has the stones to challenge VMWare in my opinion. There are enough developers working feverishly on the various projects and products that innovation is moving rapidly and efficiently towards parity and possibly advancement past VMWare. Citrix's acquisition of XenSource last year is beginning to show the industry a viable second hypervisor with the support infrastructure of a mature organization. While there are other Xen based systems out there, none of them have the polished product combined with the support and financing of a mature company. This gives Citrix XenServer 4.1 a significant advantage over all the others with the exception of Microsoft and VMWare. The next year for Citrix will be the make or break of Xen virtualization. My prediction is a big win.

VMWare continues to innovate, although the pace has slowed. They are also dealing with the recent forced departure of Dianne Greene who is a co-founder of the company. This may indicate lack of execution on requirements set by owner EMC, although based on the revised earnings guidance issued at the same time and some price increases heading for the EMEA and APAC geographies, it may be due to a shortfall and perhaps creative accounting. The product itself is in position to continue to be the dominant player over the next several years due to ESX 3i integration at the BIOS level with major OEMs and the large product install base that they have garnered over the last several years.

My predictions for this time next year are that Xen in all its various flavors will have captured about a 20% market share, Microsoft may have up to 30% and VMWare will hold the rest. The most exciting areas to watch are in the management space of the infrastructure around them. Look to disk technology companies and management software vendors such as PlateSpin and VizionCore to lead in these spaces.

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