The VMware hypervisor ESX Server is no more called in this way.
Even without a formal announcement the company dropped the term Server from its product name so that now we have two product: VMware ESX and VMware ESXi (in place of formerly ESX Server 3i).
Most of the online documentation still reports the former “ESX Server” label so customers may be confused for a while. Probably VMware will complete the name make-over in time for the release of VI 3.5 Update 1, scheduled for April 10.
It’s interesting to consider why the company renamed its most popular, flagship product.
The first, most likely reason is that the large majority of customers usually refers to the hypervisor with just ESX, which is shorter and easier to say. But there may be other reasons behind the change.
The Server word inside ESX Server implied that the hypervisor is for back-end implementation, which may be limitating for VMware on the long run.
What if the company is preparing to port its hypervisor to other platforms, like embedded devices for example? Running a server product on a mobile device sounds confusing and prevents the marketing department from creating an edition called ESX Mobile or ESXm.
VMware also performed another substantial change in its naming convention: it dropped the sentence an EMC company from the corporate logo.
The company is still an EMC subsidiary but the tagline was probably disturbing EMC competitors like HP and IBM which are top VMware partners.