VMware May Be Microsoft’s Top Rival After Google
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Even these days, an awful lot of Windows servers are doing exactly what Netware was doing before them, file and print serving. MS obviously recognize this with the new Server Core Edition. But printers are first-class citizens too now, many of them don't need a server, they just plug directly into the network, run their own admin app over HTTP...
For some perspective on Vmware's strategy in this area.
Erm, one of them isn't like the others.
Say you got 10 Linux Machines on your startup. Your developers are all doing their development on the linux but have to test the product on windows as well. Moreover, you need to author/edit/view some files on windows/ms office.
Since you are running your windows/ms office instance on a virtual machine, you will need to buy a single license for the product and then once you had it activated, you can simply clone the machines across the network having each one of your developer his/her own copy of this windows instance.
In this case it might or might not be legally permitted but there can be a virtual product which breaks the licensing model without breaking the law.
That is one of the reasons I don't like them. Whenever someone comes up with something innovative, MSFT jumps into that area, copies the concepts; uses the financial muscle and its huge presence the existing markets to kill the competition. Netscape is only an example of that strategy. It's a bad thing for a lot of potential startups.
Judging from the moderation I think people have taken it both ways.
I think the "more natural" course of things would be to run the existing win xp installation in a virtualized environment on a non-ms os.
is probably it. There's no great rush of happy XP users wanting to 7 in a VM.
MS has a massive effort underway to compete with the Flash platform and associated tools for designers.