Virtualization Daily

Over the past few days there’s been quite a storm brewing related to a conflict between VMWare and Microsoft. This was sparked by a paper VMWare posted criticizing Microsoft’s recent licensing changes.

Microsoft is trying to restrict customers’ flexibility and freedom to choose virtualization software by limiting who can run their software and how they can run it. Microsoft is leveraging its ownership of the market leading operating system and numerous applications that are market leaders in their respective categories (Exchange, SQL Server, Active Directory) to drive customers to use Microsoft virtualization products. Their tactics are focused on software licensing and distribution terms (for SQL Server, Exchange, Windows Server, Vista) and through the APIs and formats for virtualized Windows.

Microsoft is obviously not enthused by this and is claiming VMWare is wrong.

Microsoft believes the claims made in VMware’s whitepaper contain several inaccuracies and misunderstandings of our current license and use policies, our support policy and our commitment to technology collaboration.

We’ve been here before folks (Netscape vs. Internet Explorer). They’re showing all the signs of being the same old Microsoft, a threat appears (Netscape), they release an inferior product(early versions of IE), spread all kinds of FUD about how great the next version of their product will be(slows the market), then they start using aggressive tactics to force users towards their product(bundling IE into the OS, aggressive bundling deals with hardware vendors) and finally after three or four tries they release a product that actually works. Substitute VMWare for Netscape and Microsoft Virtual Server for IE and we’re seeing the same story all over again. But this time we know the game a little better.

VMWare is the dark horse that represents the biggest threat to Microsoft’s OS dominance. Most people have been looking to Linux and Mac OS X to take away their dominant position, but as usually happens when real change occurs, people were looking in the wrong place. Virtualization, and VMWare in particular, represent a huge threat to Microsoft. Simply, virtualization makes the OS irrelevant. No longer is there a coupling between the OS with its programming APIs and the underlying hardware. Developers are free to choose whatever APIs they want and if they bundle their application as a virtual appliance it can be delivered to run on any underlying operating system. At JumpBox we ship a single virtual appliance that runs exactly the same on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux using any of VMWare, Parallels, Xen, Microsoft Virtual Server or Virtual Iron. This is a level of portability that was vastly more difficult to achieve in the past. This kind of thing scares the bejeezus out of Microsoft. The ironic thing about it? Microsoft’s licensing tactics are keeping them from really playing in this space. Want to build a virtual appliance on Windows? Forget it, they won’t allow it, or more accurately they won’t allow it in any way that will work anywhere other than on Microsoft Virtual Server. And that’s a big part of VMWare’s argument.

It’s obvious that Microsoft is going to fight back, they don’t really have any choice. Unfortunately, they also have a lot of experience waging war using scorched earth tactics. In fact, I believe it’s the only way they really know how to fight. It’s good for Microsoft, but bad for everyone else in the industry. This is going to get a lot uglier before it’s over. Let’s just hope that this time we’ve learned our lesson and we don’t end up with the same conclusion as the previous war.