Virtualization Daily

During a speech this week at the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo, VMWare co-founder Mendel Rosenblum was quoted saying:

Asked if he thinks the virtual appliance model is a threat to OS vendors, principally Microsoft, Rosenblum said, “If I were in their shoes … I think the answer is yes.”

This idea is a little fuzzy, because virtual appliances still contain an OS, but the point of innovation has moved. With a virtual appliance a software developer has much more freedom in choosing their toolset. The current OS model is about APIs and developing lock-in with applications built around those APIs. Now we’re moving to a model where the network is the communications bus and APIs are defined on network boundaries. In this scenario how an application is written is no longer interesting and the focus can shift to the services the application provides.