Victory predicted for Microsoft's Hyper-V

Redmond poised to oust VMWare, says analyst

Shaun Nichols in San Francisco, vnunet.com 03 Jul 2008

Microsoft will see its Hyper-V virtualisation system overtake market leader VMware, according to one industry analyst.

Joe Clabby, president of Clabby Analytics, said in a recent report that Hyper-V holds more than enough advantages over VMWare to win the battle.

"VMware is about to experience some serious competition from a vendor with deep pockets, a massive worldwide marketing and sales organisation, and major market penetration across Fortune 500 and SME markets," he said.

The analyst noted that there are at least six fields in which VMware is at a disadvantage. Particularly, the company lacks experience as a major hardware and systems vendor.

Clabby sees the virtualisation market moving further into the areas of virtualising multiple systems and components, an area in which Microsoft has long held sway.

"To play in the x86 infrastructure and management markets, VMware needs to directly compete with some very large and well established vendors including Microsoft, Symantec, IBM, HP, Sun, BEA and others," he said.

"Many of these vendors already have very deep infrastructure and management offerings, and several have one very huge, distinct advantage over VMware: they can do a far better job of managing physical as well as virtual resources."

Clabby also cited Microsoft's larger install base and ability to bundle Hyper-V with Windows Server 2008, as well as a greater array of systems management tools.

The analyst concluded that, although tardy, Hyper-V will be a formidable force in the virtualisation market.

Meanwhile, VMware could see its position in the market shrink as Microsoft and other larger competitors enter the field.

"As these vendors become more aggressive in the virtualisation marketplace, VMware will see not only increased market pressure but significant margin pressure," Clabby wrote.

"VMware will not go away in the near term, but IT buyers will soon find that other, more comprehensive alternative offerings are available for less than VMware."

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