You never want the low ground in a battle – unless you’re fighting for marketshare in the operating system space…
If you produce an OS, being the guy at the bottom is key. You want to control the user’s experience completely, connecting all the way from the applications at the top down to the physical hardware at the bottom. It’s a position of power and control – a position that Microsoft was able leverage to become the most pervasive operating systems vendor on the planet. And it was considered one of the most defensible positions you could have in the marketplace.
Until virtualization came along…
Virtualization creates a software emulation of a machine environment, allowing a single machine to appear like multiple systems. This allows users to maximize their investment in hardware, and provides a more redundant environment for applications to run in. And it lives between the operating system and the hardware.
It becomes the machine the OS runs on…
It is operating system independent, working equally well with Linux, Windows, or OS X. And because it sits right next to the hardware and provides virtual functionality to whatever OS it is hosting, it’s a footprint that can support many high value services.
Services that traditionally lived inside the operating system…
This could include things like sophisticated virus protection, firewalls, identity/security validation, automatic failovers, clustering, and storage virtualization. And unlike in the operating systems market, the big player in this space isn’t Microsoft. It’s a company owned by EMC called VMWare.
As virtualization technology gains in popularity, it could end up competing with operating systems in many of the high end functionality areas. These are the areas that have the highest value in the marketplace. With maturity of the technology, VMWare and other virtualization vendors could pose a serious challenge to traditional operating system providers. This would be especially true in the datacenter space, where maximizing utilization and redundancy are critical factors. The last thing a Microsoft – or even an Apple – would want to see is a comoditization of their server operating systems.
And that is exactly what virtuialization can do…
Given the threat posed by this technology, Microsoft does plan on launching a a virtualization capability of it’s own (Viridian), but is packaging it inside Windows Vista Server. This will be the third front Microsoft will be focusing on, along with the traditional competion coming from an ever improving Linux, and the rising threat from pure play web solutions like those offered by Google.
And all of these threats are real…
Linux – combined with virtualization – is clearly a viable, cost effective solution for datacenters. And web based solutions effectively address many of the needs found in small and medium sized businesses. Combine this with a newly emergent Apple in the consumer space, and it’s clear that competition is alive and well in the operating system space.
It doesn’t look like Microsoft will catch a break any time soon…
Google Apps is an ad supported service that includes IM and email, along with a calendar app, word processor, spreadsheet, web page editor, and personalized portal home page. Despite being fairly basic functionality wise, these applications take advantage of their web pedigree by being natively collaborative with anyone you choose to work with. That is a powerful capability that would normally require significant IT involvement to configure with any of the desktop office suites. It requires a simple configuration when delivered as a service.
It is clear that Google is committed to building out this aspect of their business, and establishing themselves in a product area that is now dominated by Microsoft’s Office suite. Office is one of Microsoft’s main revenue engines, and they are in the process of rolling out their latest release – Office 2007. And while Microsoft also offers an online service called Office Live, it is designed as a set of web tools that compliment the capabilities found in their desktop suite. It isn’t a web based version of Office’s applications.
Come midnight tonight, Vista will be launched into the retail channel. Anyone that wants a copy will now be able to go out and buy it. In fact, just for those desperately lacking a life, both Best Buy and CompUSA will have special openings at midnight tonight to start selling copies.