IN MY DAYTIME job I happen to see the staged disposal of VMware as a result migration to Free software such as KVM, the preferred Linux solution which is also gratis, not just free/libre. As we pointed out before, VMware is now managed by former Microsoft managers and it is said to have been close to buying Novell last year. According to this new article, VMware and Novell have things in common other than the Microsoft connection. To quote: "So where does this leave Microsoft? As Wittmann pointed out in his analysis of VSphere 5, it feels like VMWare is becoming a bit like the Novell of old: Novell provided a dominant network operating system but let Microsoft creep up with features that were good enough and, most important, cheap enough to eventually win over IT pros and developers. VSphere 5 may be a great way to distance VMWare's offering from the rest of the pack, but how long can the virtualization stalwart fend off other players, especially with the resulting community unrest over pricing?"

"As for Novell, some years ago it bought a virtualisation company (PlateSpin) whose heads quit Novell shortly thereafter."Linux virtualisation solutions now have the same features as VSphere, so it will be hard for VMware to justify its prices. The other day we came across reports that suggest Hyper-V from Microsoft is not doing particularly well. In fact, we hardly hear about it anymore. Microsoft sure does not rave about it much. As for Novell, some years ago it bought a virtualisation company (PlateSpin) whose heads quit Novell shortly thereafter. Based on some new reports, PlateSpin is not dead yet, but the"remaining two PlateSpin products, PlateSpin Orchestrate and PlateSpin Recon, were apparently not enhanced at this time." There is more information here. Is Attachmate serious at all about competing in this area? Maybe it is too early to find out, but there were layoffs. And in other news involving Novell, "Colin Byrne, EMEA credit and collection manager at Novell (Ire) Software Ltd, says: “Every day we have a new case of a customer delaying payment and it always relates to the knock on effect of them struggling to recover cash from their own customers. We do try to be flexible where we feel a customer needs a little elbow room. However, there are certain companies taking advantage of the “crisis” to attempt to push terms out unnecessarily - and these are the cases where we try to stand firm.

“Personally I’d like to see banks giving more support, particularly to the SME sector. But also, tougher sanctions on larger companies who are contributing massively to the cash slow down by deliberately paying smaller suppliers late. I cannot understand how this can be a genuine long term commercial strategy, given the blatantly obvious impact it is having.”

That's just generally one of the dangers of having one's servers dependent on proprietary products like VMware's and Novell's. How long can these two companies justify the expense? ⬆