Vmware vs Microsoft, Past, Present and future war

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Silver

All right, this post is about Vmware vs Microsoft. Let’s kick it off.

Not very long ago…………..

When virtualization technology was still a dream, Microsoft was focusing on developing OS and how to make OS do more and better. They were busy fighting with Google on Internet service and try to iron a sword call “Bing” which brings them nothing else but failure.  But what MS didn’t see was there was a company actually researching silently how to make both hardware and software virtualize. The only thing Microsoft protected themselves was secret of releasing free memory which is still a black box for vmware even at this day.

Not for long, Microsoft (even Citrix) started to release there are huge cake they didn’t notice before. They started to put money on virtualization and hypervisor merged up. As you all know, it’s basically a joke and very very few companies actually adopted it. MS knew they lost their first round.

After ESX 3.5 coming up, Vmware started to release their weakness in the natural . They don’t make Applications. No matter how great your platform is, customers only care about applications (or you can say services) running on it and how much benefits apps provide to customers. Hence, a new war begins. People call it, Cloud War.

the dawn of Cloud War……

MS soon understand what they can’t win (on the virtualization OS) and what they can ( on Enterprise applications). They know they are holding the key to the future. Because customers (especially Enterprise customers) will only buy their products for their business. However, with huge size of fleet, turning 90 degree is not one year thing as MS is using ESB(Enterprise service Bus), all software are essentially connected to each other. Changing architecture of all flag ship products will take years and even years to plan. But MS has already focus on it.

(I just came back from MS support center in Shanghai, they have relocated from central of Shanghai to a very far far away region and try to minimize the cost. Why? Because they need more developers rather than supporters!)

Vmware predicted this development long time ago. But it’s the fact they don’t have many experiences and enough fund to fight with MS. So they bound themselves with allies. EMC, Cisco, Netapps, Google are all close friends. Vmware understand how important third parties are and happy to share big cakes with everyone helps them. But will that be enough? The real question here is whether Enterprise level of software will be replaced by Saas? With latest Thinapps 4.6, AppFactory can automatically recycle thinapps when there are new version or patches. But none of MS products are actually on support list of AppFactory.

War in Future……………….

What we are fight for? MS claims you still need to use Office, Exhange, Windows Servers and SQL servers. All data need to be centralized and managed by one system. Do you agree? Vmware believes SaaS will hold the world in the future. They believe application revolution is raising. You don’t need Dinosaur size software to do simple thing. They believe some small smart applications + ERP system will be excellent replacement for MS applications. That’s why VMware focus on hybrid Cloud and Vmware Cloud director.

It’s still way too early to tell who is going to win the battle. But one thing we all know the cloud is right above our head.

All what you need to do is to look up and find the Silver lining. 🙂