Techworld published an interesting interview with XenSource Founder and CTO Simon Crosby.
Interviewer started talking about recent OEM agreement inked with Symantec, but Crosby’s answers about virtualization industry are much more interesting:
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Q: Is VMware really that horrible? A: Unlike VMware, Microsoft doesn’t compete with its channel but leaves room for an ecosystem. It’s a superb platform player. Microsoft is very conscious of its scale and leaves pockets of $100m markets around for its partners. Our relationship with Microsoft is strong, will remain strong, and strengthens every day. Microsoft has been a very supportive partner.
The chink in VMware’s armour is the weakness of its ecosystem — all its partners are under threat. That said, I wouldn’t fault VMware entirely. VMware has grown very fast — they had to do that so I can’t fault them for it, but no-one’s making money out of VMware. There’s a general sense of unease.
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Q: How do you see virtualisation evolving over the next two years? A: Hardware vendors will certify the hypervisor and it’s up to the customer to do everything else. Customers want to virtualise everything else because the savings are so huge — the confidence in virtualisation is high but it’s too complex for the average guy.
On the client, virtualisation technology has to be invisible and work using [management] technology such as Intel’s vPro. There also has to be a viable ecosystem or it’s a niche product…
Read the whole interview at source.