VMware: Not dead yet

People fond of quoting George Santayana's bon not, "Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it," are applying his thinking to VMware Inc. these days. In this case, the company is doomed.

They see the EMC subsidiary as having the misfortune of playing in the same sandbox that bully Microsoft and the open source gang want to romp in. History, these observers say, is against the x86 virtual machine pioneer.

These pundits can point to history's demise of DRDOS, NetWare, Lotus 1-2-3 and more products that Microsoft pushed into technology's dustbin. And few will deny that Solaris, HP-UX, AIX and other Unix iterations have fallen victim to the open source Linux juggernaut.

How can VMware avoid such a similar fate when faced with such competition?

Well, dumping its thumb-twiddling CEO and bringing in a major ex-Microsoft executive to run the company was a good start. The next step will be dramatic price cuts. After that, and here's where the doomsayers are likely to be proven wrong, it will all be about the technology.

Tony Asaro, chief strategy officer for Virtual Iron Inc. in Lowell, Mass., points out that Microsoft's HyperV "is a 1.0 product. And they do not have a good history with 1.0 products." For something as touchy as VM technology, you're not likely to depend on a 1.0 release, he reasons.

Furthermore, virtual machines are not that simple. Before you roll out VMs you want to be certain you can effectively manage them or you won't risk it.

Asaro claims HyperV lacks a first-rate management console such as you can get today from VMware and Virtual Iron. He calls Microsoft's management of VM mobility "kludgy." And he says you need to add and pay for other Microsoft technology to get capabilities integrated with other VM software, such as clustering.

Asaro does not doubt that eventually Microsoft will deliver an improved, enterprise-ready HyperV. However, by then, maybe 18 or more months in the future, Virtual Iron's VI Center management console for its open source, Xen-based virtual technology will have made it easier, faster and cheaper to deploy and manage virtual machines.

It's doubtful that VMware will sit on its hands while Microsoft, Virtual Iron, Citrix and others improve their systems. VMware's proprietary technology, criticized by the open source advocates, naturally, is actually an advantage here because the company will be able to make (ahem) virtually any change it wants to appeal its customers.

Microsoft is burdened with decades of legacy code it has to work with along with complex integration issues for HyperV and its other products. And while open source users have access to source code, realistically they seldom touch it and, instead, wait for the open source community to release new versions with or without the features they need.

With new management focused on keeping its customers happy and assuming a dramatic new pricing structure, VMware will be in the market for a long, long time.