There have been many deals, partnerships, patent licensing agreements and acquisitions recently. One of those moves, which we described here before, is an anti-VMWare move backed by acquisition of competitors (XenSource) and special deals (Citrix) that help undermine the competition. VMWare is not the only sufferer, but it appears to be affected the most.

Last week Microsoft announced a company-wide strategy to accelerate broad adoption of virtualization by its customers. As part of its new approach, the Redmond, Wash.-based software giant unveiled a suite of services aimed at reducing the number of servers businesses need to use, separating applications from operating systems, reducing costs, and lowering carbon emissions.

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At the same time, operating systems providers such as Novell began providing virtualization in their operating systems.

Mind Novell's role in the fight against VMWare. Also be aware of the scale of VMware's sad news.

The honeymoon for VMware Inc. on Wall Street appears to be over.

The stock plummeted almost 34% because of high expectations. There is clearly a lot of pressure not just on VMWare, but also on other companies that will accordingly be affected (ripple effect). This includes Red Hat. After the MySQL and Trolltech acquisition comes another smaller one, but it's not hostile. SpringSource devours Covalent. The acquisition is actually quite a natural and symbiotic one.

Obviously, 2008 is off to a roaring start for open soure M&A. Amid all of the deals and our usual discussions with open source software vendors, we’re hearing more and more executives talk about the long-term potential of business based on open code. The SpringSource acquisition of Covalent is a perfect example.

It's reassuring to see that despite all these signs of "consolidation" (nice word for decreasing choice), one Open-Source (ish) company can acquire another, so at least none gets snatched by a giant seeking to hurt another. ⬆