VMware Platform
Question 1.
VMware has rather a competitive advantage over Microsoft Hyper-V. First of all, it is worth mentioning that VMware already has a significant market share and its product run is estimated to be between 75 and 95 percent of all virtualized servers. High customers’ satisfaction enables the company to maintain the strategic lead. Moreover, VMware has established a competitive advantage through offering a wide range of virtualized projects focusing on the management tools. VMware has an established and efficiently functioning network of developers built on VMware platform. VMware offering an opportunity to sell higher-margins servers has established and maintains the cooperation with such hardware partners as Dell, HP, and IBM.
The cooperation enabled VMware to jointly develop together with the hardware companies the technologies and tries to establish the industry-wide open standards. VMware developers believe that their product has a range of technological advantages that make it competitive with the Microsoft Hyper-V. Thus, unlike the Microsoft virtualization machine, VMware does not bundle the virtualization machine with the specific OS being able to work with the wide array of guest OSes. Moreover, the VMware is equipped with such advanced features as live migration capability, which are lacking in Hyper-V though being highly essential for the managerial and virtualized data centers.
Question 2.
a) Microsoft entering the market represents the real threat for the VMware. However, currently the Microsoft Company is more likely to focus on the server. AT the same time, the acquisition of Kidaro in 2008 clearly signaled that Microsoft is going to enter the desktop virtualization market. Given the high quality of VMware products, its spread and customers’ satisfaction it is possible that VMware will win the competition. Currently, the VMware has a competitive advantage of offering relevantly better and more advanced technologies and of having already established developers network and distributive channels. As the very news of Hyper-V coming out have caused some fear and uncertainty in the marketplace, the threat of Microsoft cannot be ignored. Applying the analogy with the browser wars, it is possible to state that even if VMware has some competitive advantages and can rely on its customers, it still needs the strategic reaction.
b) Microsoft appears to be rather interesting in the competition with the VMware. First of all, the VMware occupies the leading positions with the market offering high-quality products, which makes it necessary for Microsoft to develop the competitive strategy to win the marketplace. The area of virtualization becomes more and more used and widespread causing the necessity to enter the market. Microsoft has already shown its interest in VMware virtualization products making an attempt to acquire the company. The option to work with the multiple guest OSes provided by VMware as well as the probability of its cooperation with Linux make Microsoft determination to enter the market and compete with the VMware rather reasonable.
c) To compete with the VMware leading position on the market of visualization, Microsoft might use its market …
