Microsoft answer on recent VMware whitepaper attacking licensing strategy about virtualization arrived quickly, brief and allusive.
Mike Neil, General Manager of Virtualization Strategy at Microsoft, commented the paper to virtualization.info this way:
Microsoft believes the claims made in VMware’s whitepaper contain several inaccuracies and misunderstandings of our current license and use policies, our support policy and our commitment to technology collaboration.
We believe it’s better to resolve VMware’s claims between our two companies so that we can better serve customers and the industry. EMC is a long-time partner of Microsoft. We’ve extended this courtesy to VMware due to our mutual customers and partnership with EMC. We are committed to continuing to collaborate with VMware as we have been doing on regular basis. Consistent with this, Microsoft believes that we will be able to accommodate a mutually agreeable solution between our two companies and clear up any existing misunderstanding with regard to the points raised in the whitepaper.
While suggesting a pacific resolution of this case (which would require a public rectification from VMware), Microsoft is clearly recalling its partner EMC for the unprecedented attack of its virtualization subsidiary.
EMC announced launch of VMware Initial Public Offering (IPO) for this summer and a compromising of Microsoft partnership could lead to a remarkable damage for stock performance. An undesired risk for EMC which is not obtaining Wall Street’s benevolence since a long time.
Update: SWsoft Director of Technology, Ilya Baimetov, decided to take part in this odd competition, extending the endless competition with VMware and indirectly remarking the new partnership with Microsoft.
On his corporate blog he commented the paper defending Microsoft efforts in changing its licensing model, and remembering how VMware itself is very closed on its standards.