In the end content drives adoption. I refer you to Apple’s iPhone platform and the game changing nature of the AppStore. For those of us old enough to remember, look at Betamax and VHS and Sony’s subsequent acquisition of much of Hollywood to make sure they didn’t loose a technology war again.
We are now in another technology war, the war of the hypervisors. Microsoft, Oracle, Citrix and VMware all competing to dominate compute virtualization. I think it is likely that once again content will win through and currently Microsoft and Oracle, through their overwhelming software footprints, are executing on a pincer movement around VMware.
That makes the recent acquisition of SpringSource a Java developer platform very well timed. So the big open questions remain, who will be most successful at attracting and retaining the Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) and what about IBM?
Comment by steve weeks on 15 September 2009:
Such a great title deserved a bigger article
IBM I think needs to be very careful about the difference between support, endorsement and ownership. The market demands “Open” solutions, and they must be visibly independent. Surely the VMware advantage will win through.. Basic technology is easy to copy, but performance and compatibility take YEARS to build, and therefore VMware is guaranteed years of leadership.
Comment by Steve O'Donnell on 15 September 2009:
Steve
A valid point about VMware leadership and sorry that the article length failed to meet your expectations. :-;
I think hypervisors are going through a sea change, where VMware has been very successful in the aftermarket caused by Windows server sprawl and has established a leadership in units shipped, that is not the whole story. Microsoft and Oracle have content, – applications. VMware does not have that advantage and will need to work hard to grab the small and medium ISVs to ensure future success.
Steve
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