At the end of October VMware released its first capacity planning tool: CapacityIQ.
As always happens when a market leader expands into a new segment, its previous partners suddenly turn into competitors.
Some of them are able to keep the pace and deliver value on top of the new product, but this requires a number of resources that not every startup has, and a cooperation between the two companies that the newcomer may be uninterested in.
VMware is in the capacity planning space since ever with its hosted and free service Capacity Planner. But so far the product has been accessible only to the Professional Services Organizations (PSOs), which granted enough room to the partners to sell their on-premises products.
Now, with CapacityIQ around, VMware partners may lose market share.
They still can try compete on price, number of features and frequency of updates, but will always be customers that want everything from a single vendor, and there will always be vendors that gives away their newest product to establish a presence in a new segment.
VKernel is one of those partners: the company criticized the value of CapacityIQ at launch, but now its running to give away its flagship product for free (for a limited timeframe anyway).
If you download their Capacity Analyzer before the end of the year, you’ll receive a free license for unlimited sockets. Perpetual.
And of course VKnernel now is also in hurry to clarify that support for Microsoft Hyper-V and Citrix XenServer is coming.
Update: It seems that VKernel is not really giving away its flagship product, but a limited version called Capacity Modeler. Possibly the same tool that the company launched as beta in October 2008.
This post will be further updated with details as soon as possible.