It appears that VMware will soon be making a move to better compete against Microsoft’s “free” hypervisor: the company will be offering ESX 3i for free.
According to several sources, VMware will begin giving away its lightweight hypervisor beginning July 28th. Read the full articles here and here.
This move by VMware could be the “shot heard round the world” in igniting the war between ESX and Hyper-V. VMware already has the luxury of a large user base, compared to Microsoft’s fledgling product. This move effectively eliminates Hyper-V’s price advantage, which was already the subject of many heated blog posts by the two respective companies.
Will VMware’s strategy allow it to continue to stay ahead of the competition? One thing’s for sure — the next few months sure will be interesting. Hold on.
I heard that they were planning to do this even before the recent news about their CEO and such.
But it is definitely a good move. Hopefully they can drop prices on their other products, too.