OStatic

Last year, I wrote a post on the precipitous share price drop, CEO ouster, and overall malaise that virtualization player VMware has seen as free, open source competition has threatened the company and its proprietary business model. VMware has released an open source virtualization client since then, as well as many other open source tools. Today, Matt Asay and David Cappuccio consider whether there are several analogs between Novell and VMware, and what lies ahead for VMware's proprietary model.

Last year, following a crash in its share price and the replacement of its CEO with a seasoned Microsoft executive, I wrote about the perils that virtualization titan VMware faces. The problems come from two trends: 1) open source virtualization offerings; and 2) free virtualization within operating systems. From the free virtualization project Xen to the virtualization that Microsoft, Sun, Red Hat and others offer in operating systems,VMware's proprietary strategy looked mighty shaky. Today, VMware made what I consider the shrewdest move it could: launching an open source client for virtual desktops.