How Virtualization Led Microsoft to Support Linux 99
Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "Why did Microsoft make the surprise announcement that it would support business customers who also use Linux? Because of the increasing importance of virtualization, Lee Gomes writes in the Wall Street Journal. 'Once businesses start using virtualization to cut back on the number of machines they need to buy, "a light bulb goes on over their head," says Tony Iams, who follows the field for Ideas International, an analyst group,' Gomes writes. 'Other uses become apparent, such as backing up data or easily adding processor power to a particular application as the need arises.' VMware pioneered the market, but now Microsoft is 'expected to offer sophisticated virtualization products in the next year or two,' Gomes writes. 'The company currently has a fairly rudimentary product, which was involved in its big Linux announcement earlier this month.'"
Not doing it will Hurt MS. (Score:2, Insightful)
Beware of Geeks bearing gifts! (Score:4, Insightful)
Microsoft != stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
The simple fact is that M$ wants to keep its name in the big buisnesses because 10,000 licenses a year is a big deal, plus those big boys of buisness also influence their workers to be familiar with windows, which leads their families to purchase windows, and so on and so on.
Re:Like My Grandpappy Used To Say... (Score:1, Insightful)
VMWare "pioneered" the market???? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Microsoft != stupid (Score:3, Insightful)
The interesting thing (to me) is whether this is a "MS takes over yet another niche" phenomenon or whether this is a "MS desperately trying to slow loss of market share." If they don't support Linux at all, they will lose a certain number of people who decide to go fully Linux to suit their needs. By offering compatible virtualization, MS can also recapture this market. On the other hand, building in this compatibility will make some people experiment with Linux who might not have otherwise. Thus there is some number of customers that MS stands to lose (in the long term) because people become familiar with Linux.
Apparently MS is betting that the number of people they gain will outweigh the number they lose. I think they are right, in the short term... but that in the long term virtualization in general (with MS's contribution being included in that) stands to help Linux more than it helps Windows. When any OS can run any other OS as a virtual system quickly and efficiently, then consumer choice is maximized. As more people become familiar with Linux, the idea of spending alot of money on MS Windows will cease to be attractive. An entire company might be able to get away with only paying for a few Windows licenses, since when they are needed they would be transparently transferred to the computer that needed it at that moment.
OS sold with server is important (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:VMWare "pioneered" the market???? (Score:3, Insightful)
As for slower. That's a question I'm not competent to answer, because I never had the opportunity run an IBM mainframe *without* VM.
IPL CMS, baby!
You will be able to tell they're ready.... (Score:3, Insightful)
This way, you get a VMware ESX style OS to handle virtual servers on the box which would presumably come with some set number of windows server licenses, and a per virtual server licensing option for windows running on virtualization options other than MS's own.
Sell in option would be to do server consolidation for companies. The pitch? "Let us consolidate these 10 servers onto one box for you, you save the yearly maintenance costs on 9 servers, and we credit your account part of what those 2003 server licenses are costing on all of them to help subsidize the virtualization software with double that number of virtual windows servers licensed on it."
The potential is here for it to be truly insidious.
Re:Beware of Geeks bearing gifts! (Score:5, Insightful)
This is something Microsoft has already done with other products they could not otherwise embrace, extend and extinguish: They simply make it look bad.
Like distributing Java 1.1 for years. Or having pages return degraded content for Opera browsers.
I don't know that they'll introduce actual data corruption, but I can certainly envision the VM doing a number of things very slowly, particularly if it's running Linux or emulating functionality that Linux is known to frequently rely on. It may not even be deliberately hobbled functionality, but rather "lax support" for some key functionality.
Re:Like My Grandpappy Used To Say... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Copycats (Score:3, Insightful)
Somewhat OT: Check out Parallels [parallels.com], as mentioned in the New York Times (scroll halfway down) [nytimes.com]. It's like VMWare for Macs.