As part of positioning themselves, VMware is emphasizing its ILITIES -- scalability, reliability, maintainability, serviceability, updateability, flexibility, runability, securability you-name-it-ility -- which on the surface sounds good but in fact, without measurable proof points illustrating the difference, it's hard to establish significant differentiation around the "ilities" because... well everyone says the same thing and the words without evidence don't carry substantial meaning. We've yet to have a briefing where the vendor flips a PowerPoint slide which states "We Don't Scale" or "We're Not Reliable." Every vendor claims that they've got more of the "ilities" than do the other guys and customers don't have a simple way to judge for themselves. So without evidence, then "Good Enough" becomes just that. The "ilities" are deceptive because one can fool oneself into thinking that you've successfully used the "ilities" to establish a firm marketing position. It's fine if someone wants to claim title to the "ilities" but when they do they should recognize that they still need to establish differentiation. What's clear is that both sides -- Microsoft and VMware --agree that the battleground will be all the value add stuff -- starting with data center management (physical and virtual?), operational excellence (H/A, DR?) VM management (Live Migration?), scope (heterogeneous?), and for Microsoft extending to model driven (see Oslo article below).