Sun and Microsoft Deliver Virtualization Agreements

by Sam Dean - Sep. 08, 2008Comments (0)

Sun Microsystems and Microsoft had news on the virtualization front today. We've written before about Microsoft's Hyper-V virtualization offering. Now, the company has announced that it is removing the $28 price for the standalone version of Hyper-V Server 2008 and will make it available free within a month. Meanwhile, Sun is expanding its cross-platform virtualization collaboration with Microsoft with Windows Server Certification for its upcoming Sun xVM Server, and other moves. These represent more competition for players such as virtualization company VMware.

Sun has made key pieces of its virtualization software available as open source through the OpenxVM.org community. Sun will participate in Microsoft's Server Virtualization Validation program to validate its virtualization software for Windows Server 2008 and prior versions. Sun and Microsoft are also planning to offer customers the Solaris operating system as a certified guest on Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V. On its side, Sun will provide Sun Ray thin client customers the ability to access Windows as a guest OS through Hyper-V virtualization.

Although Sun and Microsoft have a long history of bickering, Microsoft is very focused on data centers with the virtualization tools that it is now bundling with Windows Server and offering for free on a standalone basis. Sun has a firm foothold in data centers, and it makes sense for the two companies to encourage cross-platform sharing through virtualization.

We've written before about how virtualization tools are becoming commodities--expected for free in operating systems. I still think the long-term path for these virtualization tools is to become like software utilities in the operating system, which is bad news for proprietary players such as VMware.

Not everyone agrees, though. Matt Asay notes in this post that VMware could "move up the stack" with its virtualization offerings, offering value that commoditized virtualization can't. That, of course, depends on how differentiated from free tools VMware can continue to make its software. We'll keep our eyes on how all of this plays out.