Lending further proof to the theory I recently bought into regarding the impending demise of the hypervisor as a competitive advantage, VMware announced this week that they will no longer charge for their ESXi embedded hypervisor effective July 28, 2008.
This is a pretty big step for VMware, though they are really only foregoing about $500 per server sold. The main point is that they are acknowledging that their role in the industry is no longer to be the standard-bearer for virtualization as a concept. Instead they are now in a position where they must depend on their management tools and other functions being a value-add and having that drive their sales. The Virtual Infrastructure management tools will still cost you, as will a standalone license of ESX. Time to start planning for those ESXi implementations if you aren’t already.
VMware also announced that they were going to be getting “more active in the cloud,” whatever that means. Of course this is no surprise since the new CEO was formerly responsible for EMC’s Cloud business, but it still doesn’t explain what they’re actually going to do there. The company will, according to the new CEO, "have a lot of relevance in the cloud, and as an on-ramp into the clouds." I can’t wait for someone to explain what that actually means, because it makes very little sense to me right now.
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