eWeek - December 15, 2008

V M w a r e ’ s E S X S e r v e r i n We b b r o w s e r r e l e a s e s a n d (some estimates say more than core features, management innovation are coming as fast 85 percent) of its support from options and guest operating as they did in the day of Micro- Google, and Chrome, Google’s system support, Microsoft’s soft and Netscape’s epic strug- homegrownopen-source browser new virtualization offering gle, in the 1990s. In 2008, Apple, that was released in beta in Sep-boasts a pair of significant— Microsoft, Mozilla, Opera and a tember. and familiar—advantages: new browser warrior, Google, As applications and infrastruc-

Hyper-V is bundled with Win- released new apps, innovating ture movetothe cloudandbegin dows Server 2008 and carries on Web features and, in gen- to be delivered through the Web no additional charge. eral, pushing the browser market to a plethora of devices, control

At the very least, the forward. of the desktop operating sys-entrance of Microsoft and Google actually has two armies tem matters less and less. If the Hyper-V into a market in on the browser war field: Mozil- mobile device is the new PC, which Xen-based offerings la’s Firefox, which derives most some consider the browser the are already giving VMware new OS. And, despite Inter-a run for its money means net Explorer’s 72 percent that the days of VMware as market share, Microsoft the “no-brainer” option for can’t expect to have server consolidation and simi- the same advantage lar virtualization-based tasks in the browser arena are over. that it has had on the

Virtualization itself is fast desktop. becoming a no-brainer for the management benefits it Bill Gates retires affords, but it isn’t the cost- It was hardly a sur-cutting panacea vendors prise, but Bill Gates’ have led us to believe it to retirement marked be. As adoption grows, so do the end of the PC’s challenges—including the first 33 years and cap-

Microsoft shook up the market with its Hyper-V, and new virtualization storage and security chal-

cost of the high-end serv- tured our attention for
lenges arose. ers and memory required weeks.
to support virtualization, as G a t e s r e m a i n s
TOP NEWS STORIES FROM PAGE 20 well as security and storage Microsoft’s chairman
Microsoft presented x86 server concerns. and largest share-
virtualization leader VMware
holder, but June 27