The Little Geeni

According to various analysts, the number one rival for Microsoft is Google, but a strong candidate for the second position is a company that is scarcely known outside the technology industry, called VMware. Both companies provide similar challenge to Microsoft, by potentially undermining the dominance of its most profitable products, desktop software and operating systems.

While Google provides options for the Microsoft’s popular Office products like free advertising-supported software for e-mail, word processing, calendars and spreadsheets online, VMware allows a computer to run two or more operating systems at once. Its software virtualizes the hardware for a video adapter, a network adapter and hard disk adapters, and hence helps both the hardware and the operating system.

The feature discusses various reasons for the VMware’s challenge to Microsoft.

Reasons for the threat:

1.    According to various reports, more than 80 percent of virtualized computing workloads ran on VMware at the end of last year. And the remaining share was further divided in Microsoft, Citrix Systems’ Xen, Virtual Iron and others. Hence, in virtualization market, Microsoft has a long way to go.

In July 2009, Microsoft had introduced its HyperV virtual machine in Windows Server 2008 and some new features will catch VMware with October launch. A research firm projected that Microsoft’s share of installed virtual machine software would increase to 29% by the end of 2012, from 8% at the end of last year. But, VMware had announced that it already signed more than 21,000 new customers in the first half of 2009.

2.    Last month, the company had acquired SpringSource at an estimated cost of $420 million. SpringSource is a maker of open-source software development tools, which analyze and tweak the performance of applications. The acquisition of SpringSource would allow VMware to built applications like Microsoft Windows.

3.    Paul Maritz, a former senior executive at Microsoft, took over as chief executive VMware and adds an edge to its bottom-up challenge to Microsoft. In the late 1990s, he was regarded as Microsoft’s third-ranked executive, after Bill Gates and Steven A. Ballmer. In January, he was joined by Tod Nielsen, former Microsoft executive, who became VMware’s chief operating officer. Hence, the company has an edge over its competitors.

4.    VMware has been also planning to enter the desktop and notebook market. It will introduce new technologies by next year for better handling for high-end graphics and will allow users to do work in the absence of any network connection.

5.    VMware, Intel partner to sell VMware vSphere 4: Earlier this month, VMware Inc has announced an agreement with Intel to sell VMware vSphere 4 with Intel products starting from Q4, 2009. After the deal, Intel will provide VMware vSphere 4 through its worldwide distributor network to resellers and system integrators that service small and midsized businesses (SMBs).

6.    VMware had reported $1.9 billion in revenue last year, while Microsoft reported first revenue drop since going public in 1986.

Conclusion

In 2007, VMware had successfully introduced its initial public offering, which was one of the largest technologies I.P.O. since Google. Now, various PC makers are voting for VMware with the precious asset of hardware real estate. VMware is the market-share leader specializing in virtualization software and its majority owned by EMC Corporation. Hence, VMware is definitely a threat to the software giant.

editor Information Technology Inc.‏, Latest, Microsoft, threat, VMware