Does VMware Have a Real Future

KVM has been maturing. Red Hat's third version of its KVM-based Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization program is greatly improved. Some experts, like IDC analyst Gary Chen, think it has what it takes to compete. And, of course, Red Hat is the Microsoft of the Linux market.

VMware has acted as if it, too, can see what's coming. It wisely tried to get into the operating system game by buying Novell and its SUSE Linux distribution, but at the last minute, dark horse Attachmate swooped in and snapped up Novell . How could sleepy little Attachmate pull this deal off With a lot of help from Microsoft , that's how. To my mind, that incident suggests that Microsoft still knows how to play hardball. Or maybe the operative metaphor is chess; Microsoft was looking several moves ahead. It didn't want VMware to be able to combine its strong virtualization portfolio with a strong business Linux server.

And so, today, VMware is sitting exposed, despite retaining a huge market-share edge in the virtualization market. It's in a weak position because it can't offer customers a complete virtualization/operating system vertical stack.

Of course, VMware will say its rivals' commoditized virtualization hypervisors aren't nearly as good as its polished programs. That may be so, but it doesn't really matter when what the competition is offering for free is good enough. That's a deal that's awfully tough to beat.

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols has been writing about technology and the business of technology since CP/M-80 was cutting-edge and 300bps was a fast Internet connection -- and we liked it! He can be reached at sjvn@vna1.com .