VMWare Goes Free in Bid to Counter Microsoft Virtual Server

VMWare Goes Free in Bid to Counter Microsoft Virtual Server
Paul Thurrott, February 6, 2006

How does one compete with low-ball Microsoft pricing? By making one's offering available for free, of course. This morning, virtualization leader VMWare announced that it's offering a free software virtualization server, dubbed VMWare Server. This product will compete with the suddenly inexpensive Microsoft Virtual Server products.

Just how inexpensive is Virtual Server? Microsoft announced last month that customers who acquire one license for Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise Edition could obtain the high-end Virtual Server 2005 R2 Enterprise Edition at a reduced price of $99 through June 30, 2006. But even the standard Virtual Server pricing isn't exorbitant: Virtual Server 2005 R2 Standard Edition retails for just $99, and the regular retail price of Enterprise Edition is just $199. Previous to the R2 versions, Virtual Server cost $499 for Standard Edition and $999 for Enterprise Edition.

VMWare says the industry's new pricing models suggest that virtualization is going mainstream. The free VMWare Server product, a successor to the fee-based VMWare GSX Server, will capitalize on the company's superior virtualization technologies and provide features that Microsoft doesn't. For starters, VMWare Server runs on both Windows and Linux. And unlike the Microsoft offering, VMWare Server will support 64-bit guest OSs such as Windows XP Professional x64 Edition.

Virtualization products such as VMWare Server, Virtual Server, and the client-based Microsoft Virtual PC let users run complete OS environments in software-based virtual machines (VMs). Although interactive virtual environments run at only a fraction of the speed of true hardware-based OS installs, they are useful for testing and Help desk scenarios. Server-based VMs, however, are increasingly useful for consolidating legacy servers in a central location. Because they aren't typically used interactively, server-based VMs often perform surprisingly well.

A beta version of VMWare Server is available now for download from the VMWare Web site. The company says that the final version of the product will ship sometime in the first half of 2006.

http://www.vmware.com/products/server/

---

If you get involved with vmware, you need a strong download manager.
The Free Download Manager is one of the best, in my opinion.

Free Download Manager

Sun labs and HP labs:

Sun Labs:

Sun Microsystems Laboratories is collaborating with 28 universities around the world as it strives to enhance Internet and network security, improve search capabilities for music files, and create new programming languages.

Sun Labs, which developed the hugely successful Java programming language, claims to have one of the highest rates of transferring technologies developed in the labs to commercialized company products. Since the lab was established 15 years ago, its technologies have earned more than $4 billion for Sun.

And while the lab's researchers comprise about 1 percent of Sun's 16,000 engineers, they earn about 12 percent of the patents awarded annually to the company.

Still, Sun Labs' funding decreased after the dot-com bust, mirroring the decline in nationwide R&D spending in 2002 driven largely by corporate cutbacks.

Saffo, of the Institute for the Future, says corporate research labs are "hanging in there, but they're not doing well.'' While such labs can claim the creation of the scientific calculator, the Macintosh computer and the Windows interface, there haven't been any big breakthroughs recently.

"The irony, and I think this is true for all these labs, is a lot of these companies are like Moses,'' Saffo said. "They led these industries to the Promised Land, but they're doomed to stay in the desert themselves.''

HP labs: A trim 40-year-old
A decade ago, HP Labs boasted having 1,400 employees. Today, its head count is down to about 600.