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Fri, Jul 6, 2007 21:24 EDT
The Race to the Bottom -- of the Software Stack
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Posted by: Bernard Golden in Best Practices Topic: Infrastructure Blog: The Open Source
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In politics, it's said, your enemy's enemy is your friend. That formulation is true in technology as well, as evinced by the news that Dell is working with VMware to create a server with virtualization embedded in its firmware.
What motivated both parties to participate in this? In one way, you might think this kind of deal makes no sense for Dell -- after all, if it delivers a way to make using virtualization easier, won't the proliferation of virtual machines reduce demand for physical servers -- you know, the kind Dell sells?
That's true. It seems a little unappetizing. But look at the current situation from Dell's perspective. It does all the hard work of building demand with an army of salespeople. It does all the work of building the machines themselves -- dealing with the supply chain, distribution, and so on. And then it loads Microsoft Windows on top of the box. And Microsoft makes most of the margin on the box. From Dell's perspective, it's doing most of the work and getting little of the profit.
So, an alternative that lets it avoid the Microsoft tax looks pretty appealing, one would guess. And, compared with dealing with the legendarily tough Microsoft sales team, VMware must look like a much friendlier partner.
From VMware's perspective, this is a good move as well. While the company rules the virtualization roost today, Microsoft is coming right after it in the upcoming Server 2008 release. Its hypervisor, codenamed Viridian, trods the same path as many previous Microsoft strategies: let someone else develop a market and then come in with a cheap/free alternative that, by virtue of being bundled with the operating system, makes the existing option look less interesting. I mean, if you're getting functionality for free, why would you go out of your way to buy one? So VMware has looked at its predecessors like Netscape and doesn't like how the story plays out.
This is just one more move in the disintegration of the once-mighty Wintel monopoly, a razing played by both Intel and Microsoft for their own self-interest. The rise of Linux, aided by Intel, and the rise of AMD, aided by Microsoft, have both been motivated by the desire to reduce the power of the other party and increase leverage in the relationship.
These moves, and the move by
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A couple of points…
1)Most Dell machines that would use VMware would not come with any software or if they did it would be throw away. Most enterprises use their own OS builds for servers and desktops. Therefore your comments about Dell doing all the work only applies to home computers and VMware is not a strong play there.
2) IMHO, the DELL/VMware initiative is in DELL’s interest enable to compete is a megatrend market that IBM’s P5/6 and Sun’s virtualization solutions are already in.
3)I just don’t believe that Microsoft is going to pull off it the Virt game. They have fumbled for years with Microsoft Virtual Server. They have had tremendous setbacks in their still not delivered Hypervisor. I say that Microsoft Virtualization is to VMware as Zune is to IPOD…
BTW, Intel must think this a good idea, they invested over 200 million into the VMWare IPO.
John Willis
johnmwillis.com
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News, views and updates from the fast-growing world of enterprise open source software.
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