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Tool Tip: Virtualization ROI Calculation Tool

March 16, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

“The Microsoft Integrated Virtualization Business Value Analyst was developed independently by ex-Gartner TCO/ROI experts at leading ROI tool developer Alinean, Inc. This analysis tool helps customers examine current server, development/qa lab, desktop and application virtualization opportunities, quantifying the potential savings, service level and agility benefits, investment and ROI for implementing Microsoft Integrated Virtualization solutions.

The tool collects specific information about current infrastructure costs and opportunities for improvement, then uses research by Alinean to project potential costs and benefits for various optimization strategies using the Microsoft Integrated Virtualization solutions. All research was collected from actual Microsoft customers and reflects typical costs and savings for similar company type and size. All information is kept confidential and private.”

[Source: The Active Network]

Dell Reportedly Plans To Give Away VMware ESX Server 3i For Free, World Keeps Turning

March 15, 2008 by Robin Wauters 4 Comments

According to The Inquirer, it appears Dell is considering to stop charging VMware ESX Server 3i licensing fees on its PowerEdge servers to its customers. This was reportedly said by VMWare’s Senior Product Marketing Manager Martin Niemer and comes two weeks after the virtualization vendor announced it would start embedding the 32 MB hypervisor across Dell, Fujitsu-Siemens, HP and IBM servers.

This doesn’t come as a big surprise, as VMware had added to the previous announcement that hardware vendors would be able to choose which premium they would charge to end customers, if any. Expect the other hardware vendors to follow suit and drop the prices for including the hypervisors significantly (or even zero) if Dell comes through, especially with the sharp-priced Microsoft hypervisor Hyper-V on its way.

But don’t expect this to have a serious impact on the whole VMware reseller channel’s bottom line, as some blogs are proclaiming already. The real money is in the enterprise offering and upgrades anyway, and the smaller distributors and resellers have other advantages when it comes to SMB offerings besides pricing.

Microsoft Acquires Desktop Virtualization Software Maker Kidaro

March 12, 2008 by Robin Wauters 1 Comment

Microsoft announced on Wednesday that it has acquired Kidaro, a young company that helps businesses manage their collection of virtual machines. The financial details involved in the acquisition of the startup, which counts 35 employees, remained undisclosed, although Valleywag is calling it around $ 100 million.

According to CNET’s Ina Fried, Microsoft said the technology will make it easier for businesses to manage application compatibility challenges, ultimately spurring faster Vista adoption as well as broadening the use of virtual machines within enterprises.

“The challenge we have with Virtual PC today is it doesn’t have enterprise-level management and deployment with it and the user experience could be improved,” said Gavriella Schuster, a senior director in Microsoft’s Windows unit.

Schuster said that Kidaro’s technology helps on both scores. In addition to tools for setting up and managing virtual machines, Kidaro has technology that makes virtual machines less jarring for users, making them appear to be part of the standard desktop.

Kidaro’s technology will be added to a future version of Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack. The collection of tools is sold as an add-on to Microsoft’s Software Assurance program for volume license customers. Other things in the collection include an application virtualization technology known as SoftGrid and asset management tools that stem from Microsoft’s AssetMetrix acquisition.

While perhaps not a mainstream way for businesses to move to Vista, Schuster said Microsoft thinks some companies will find it more palatable with Kidaro’s tools to run older, Vista incompatible applications via a Windows XP virtual machine.

Update – from the Windows Virtualization Team Blog:

I’m told that the three founders of Kidaro will be joining Microsoft and play similar roles here, and that the plan is to keep Kidaro’s R&D team in Israel. That makes sense since Microsoft already has an R&D center in Israel.

So if you’re keeping track, this acquisition is roughly 45 days after we announced the acquisition of Calista Technologies.

[Source: Techmeme]

Microsoft Opened Up Virtualization For Vista Under Court Pressure

March 11, 2008 by Robin Wauters 1 Comment

Earlier this year, Microsoft surprisingly flip-flopped its earlier decision not to allow users to run Vista Home Basic and Vista Home Premium as guest operating systems on a virtual machine. According to Computerworld, court documents now prove MS did this because of a complaint filed with antitrust regulators.

According to a status report filed with U.S. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, Microsoft changed the end-user licensing agreements (EULA) of Vista Home Basic and Vista Home Premium under pressure from Phoenix Technologies Ltd. Phoenix, best known for the BIOS, or firmware, that it sells to PC makers, had filed a complaint with regulators sometime after early November 2007, arguing that Microsoft should open the less-expensive versions of Vista to virtualization.

Although the report didn’t name the Phoenix virtualization product, it was referring to HyperSpace, technology that the company unveiled in November 2007. HyperSpace embeds a Linux-based hypervisor in the computer’s BIOS that allows the computer to run open-source software without booting Windows. A little more than two months after Phoenix filed its complaint, Microsoft gave in. “After discussion with the Plaintiff States and the three-person technical committee that assists in monitoring Microsoft’s compliance, Microsoft agreed to remove the EULA restrictions, and has done so,” the status report said.

Unfortunately, Phoenix Technologies and Microsoft declined to comment about the complaint and the changes to virtualization in Vista.

Microsoft’s Ray Ozzie On Cloud & Utility Computing

March 10, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Interesting interview up on GigaOM today, featuring Microsoft‘s Chief Software Architect and industry luminary Ray Ozzie talking about MS’s strategy, the economics of cloud computing and the relevance of desktop and infrastructure challenges.

The most interesting bits:

OM: The costs of computing, hardware and bandwidth are dropping quickly. Do you believe that the cost will come down fast enough to make cloud computing actually a profitable business?

RAY OZZIE: Well, it’s unlikely that we would get into it if we didn’t think it was going to be a profitable business. So we’ll just manage it to be profitable. It’s going to have different margins than classic software, or the ad (-supported) business. But, we have every reason to believe that it will be a profitable business. It’s an inevitable business. The higher levels in the app stack require that this infrastructure exists, and the margins are probably going to be higher in the stack than they are down at the bottom.

…

OM: When do you think utility computing can be a profitable business; are we’re looking at like maybe two years, four years out before it actually starts to become a profitable entity?

RAY OZZIE: (Let’s) take (one company) who is in the market today: Amazon. They chose a price point. There are either customers at that price point or not. They may have priced themselves at expected costs as opposed to actual today costs, but it doesn’t really matter. They could have brought it out at twice the existing price and there still would have been a customer base, and they’d be making money at birth.

I think all of these utility-computing services, as they’re born will either be breaking even or profitable. At the scale that we’re talking about, nobody can afford, (even Microsoft) can’t afford to do it at a loss. We could subsidize it, I suppose. Google could subsidize it by profits in other parts of their business, we could subsidize it, but I don’t think there’s any reason that any of us in this world would bring out that infrastructure like this without charging for what we’re paying, and then trying to make some profit over it. The cost base is so high in terms of building these data centers you do want to kind of make it up.

Read the rest of the (edited) interview here.

Which Deals Will HP Be Announcing Soon?

March 7, 2008 by Robin Wauters 2 Comments

Reuters is reporting Hewlett-Packard is set to announce a series of deals this month expanding the server virtualization software it sells with its servers, quoting HP Vice President Mark Linesch.

HP is already working with VMware, Citrix and Microsoft on customizing their software and Hewlett-Packard’s computer servers so they work together better out of the box, Linesch said, but declined to specify which companies the deal announcements would apply to.

We’re following Reuters’ perspective on this and think the most likely is Citrix Systems, which reportedly claimed earlier that close partnerships with HP and Dell would be announced in the course of 2008. Citrix has said it would get a payment for each HP server shipped with a basic package and a larger license fee for each upgrade sold.

What do you think the announcements will be?