For years, VMware president Diane Greene led a company in an obscure
part of the industry called virtualisation. But all of the sudden, virtualisation is a hot subject, and she no longer has the market to herself.But as Microsoft's virtualisation strategy and its open source competitor called Xen both mature, VMware, an EMC subsidiary, is responding. At its second user conference, held this week, the company announced new versions of its core products — ESX Server 3 and VirtualCentre 2 — that show the company focus moving from making a single server more efficient to making a large group of them more efficient.
Another change at VMware is an effort to make its interfaces into standards that its rivals can use — potentially simplifying affairs in the software realm but also solidifying VMware's lead.
VMware's software lets an x86 computer be divided into separate virtual machines, each with its own copy of an operating system. The company started with workstations, enabling programmers to simulate the interaction of several machines or debug new software in a protected environment. But now, most of the company's revenue comes from servers.
Changes are in the offing. "VMware is a premium-priced start-up. They charged because they could. No one else was even close," Jay Bretzmann, director of IBM's high-performance Intel server division, said in a recent interview. He believes that the pricing model is starting to weaken with the arrival of competition but adds, "VMware is the de facto standard, the thing we're shipping today, and our customers are very happy about it."
And the company continues to grow. EMC reported on Wednesday that for the third quarter of 2005, VMware generated $101m in revenue, a 67 percent increase over the $61m it generated a year ago (£57m compared to £35m).
ZDNet UK sister site CNET News.com's Stephen Shankland discussed the changes with Greene at the company's headquarters in California.
Q: To start out, why don't you describe what your company does?
A: VMware
produces virtualisation software. What that means is we take a physical
x86-based system and we provide the multiple isolated, movable
partitions that you can run operating systems with their applications
in. In terms of what the customer gets, they get a way to drive
utilisation from, say, 15 percent, on up to 85 percent. They get very
cost-effective ways to do disaster recovery, high availability,
provisioning — all sorts of system-level services.
Pick a typical customer. What's their life before and after VMware? What changes?
A typical customer has got...
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Talkback
Me thinks that the future of virtual machines (as in virtual workspace) is in being able to function as a gadget for web-based portals. Meaning, someone connects and authenticates to a web based portal and that makes it possible to open up a virtual machine (within the web browser) in which a (not web based yet) application can do its thing.
Me also thinks that as the price for hardware and software licences goes down the business case for virtual machines (as in virtual servers) will become less attractive. Given also that, like it or not, virtual machines do add to the complexity and risk management factors by violating the proven rule: Keep It Simple, Stupid. As in: favour the option that lets you achieve the same with less components. Murphy can tell you why. On the other hand: working fallback capabilities and diversity help ensure business continuity in the longer run.
Other things to keep in mind: there are always more ways then one to achieve goals. Including options that would enable to use existing hardware for a couple of more years and just add what you're lacking in one creative way or the other..
My advise would be to know what you have overall and how it works (A), know what you need overall and working how some time from now (B), figure out at least two ways to get from A to B in a certain level of detail (because certain details matter in IT and most of those are not technical in nature), choose, plan the work, work the plan and stick to it.
If however you find along the way that things don't work out as pictured then don't be afraid to rediscover A and B again because most organizations learn the most along the way. Seldom do they get it right the first time. So build in room for such events beforehand.