Atlas Blinked

It took VMware's new president and CEO Paul Maritz only 20 days to make the decision to give away its stand-alone ESXi hypervisor (it used to be priced in the several hundred dollar range). Most major server manufacturers including Dell, Fijitsu-Siemens, HP, IBM and NEC have embedded VMware ESXi. So the OEM community is probably delighted as are customers. (When asked, VMware customers told us that they welcomed Microsoft's entry into the market if for no other reason than to keep a lid on pricing -- so they got that wish.) This move focuses VMware on making money from higher level value add functionality. VMware has a broad enough product line to manage this shift gracefully. But now that this pricing decision is behind them, what's next? We know what it should be -- heterogeneous management -- managing not only VMware's hypervisors but also those made by other vendors (like Microsoft and Citrix). What we don't know is WHEN VMware will decide to manage products besides its own. Here's our brief timeline of the changes so far -- June 26th -- Microsoft releases Hyper-V to the market at $28; July 8th -- Management shakeup at VMware -- Paul Maritz takes over as CEO; July 28th -- ESXi hypervisor price reduced to free. We can't wait to see what's ahead.