Microsoft Gains Ground in Virtualization
Lasting fame is rare in our YouTube culture. Gone are the days when
Jaws
or
Star Wars would dominate at the box office for months. Movies come
and go, make millions and then fade off into cultural oblivion.
TV, once the home of massively popular sitcoms that nearly everybody seemed
to watch, is now one bad reality show after another. The "characters"
quickly fade from memory. Music? Well, we wouldn't know much about that here
at RCPU, but it strikes us that today's stars will probably only be famous tomorrow
if their lives go completely off the rails.
And so it goes, albeit much more slowly, with technology. Hype about one category
of technology or another comes and goes, ebbs and flows, and one red-hot trend
eventually gives way to another. If this week's news is any indication, it's
virtualization that's coming off the boil just a little bit, downgrading as
a market from red-hot
to simply growing.
Yes, we know. The economy plays a role in the speed of market growth, but we
suspect that there are other factors at work here. For one thing, virtualization
isn't a novelty anymore, and there's bound to be a bit of market saturation
now that lots of companies have gone from craving it to using it. That's normal.
Plus, we speculate, a few unforeseen concerns -- security
comes immediately to mind -- might be dampening enthusiasm for the technology
just a bit.
What's not slowing, though, is Microsoft's push into the space. The same IDC
report that noted virtualization's slowdown also pointed out Microsoft's gains
in market share in the space with Hyper-V. Apparently Microsoft's, um, aggressive
pricing strategy (better known as under-pricing VMware or giving stuff away
for free) is working, at least to some extent -- which should be little surprise,
as Microsoft has almost always had success undercutting competitor's prices
in new markets.
And, let's be clear -- virtualization is still a hot technology; Gartner even
says that it'll be the hottest
of all in 2009. But it's not quite as red-hot as it has been for a couple
of years. So we're not burying virtualization here by any means -- we're only
saying that it seems to be going from, say, box-office smash to top DVD seller.
Either way, there's still money to be made. And it's still better than reality
TV.
What's your take on Microsoft's presence in virtualization? Are you making
money off of it? Sound off at [email protected].
Posted by Lee Pender on October 21, 2008