Microsoft boss Ballmer targets VMware

Microsoft chief executive puts VMware in the crosshairs as virtualisation growth continues

Ballmer targeting VMware in battle for virtualisation market

Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer is targeting rival VMware as the software giant prepares for the official launches of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.

During a visit to Microsoft’s London offices today, Ballmer was asked by a customer what would it take for users to consider Microsoft's virtualisation software, given that many clients have used VMware for virtualisation.

Ballmer said: "Why should you spend the money on VMware – which in my opinion is very expensive – when we provide tools to manage both our environments and also VMware environments."

Ballmer said firms should not necessarily "rip-and-replace what you've done with VMware, but for all future virtualisation I'd recommend our tools.

"Of course I'm the least unbiased person on the planet to say that," he joked.

Ballmer said a key issue was "the notion of live migration and being able to shift virtual machines round in real time".

IDC analyst Chris Ingles said there is still great potential for growth in the virtualisation sector.

"We're moving to a world of less distributed, more powerful infrastructure, more in the datacentre, more processing done centrally and then being fed out to a more intelligent set of devices," he said.

"We've really only just started with what we can do with virtualisation. There's been a lot of hype about virtualisation with most firms doing something with it."

But the percentage of servers that have been virtualised is still small, he said.

"I think we'll start to see a real change in how we use virtualisation over the next few years – IT teams will be putting out applications much more quickly and there'll also be users provisioning their own services," said Ingles.

Microsoft UK client manager Nina Sundberg highlighted the capacity for growth in virtualisation, saying that if the technology was visualised as a seven-course meal, "we're only having our aperitifs at the minute".

Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 were released to manufacturing in August for volume licensing customers who have an existing software assurance licence.

Windows 7 and the server operating system Windows Server 2008 R2 will be formally launched ahead of next year’s release of the Office 2010 productivity suite.

Last week, Microsoft also released Windows XP Mode to manufacturing, and said it would be publicly downloadable on 22 October, when Windows 7 officially launches.

XP Mode helps firms running applications that they did not move to Windows Vista. Using Microsoft’s desktop virtualisation system, Virtual PC, running under Windows 7, users can run a virtual Windows XP service pack 3 for use with these legacy applications.