I'm fresh back from the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference. This is the annual pilgrimage of 9,000 partners from around the world who come to find out about the latest Microsoft technologies. Obviously, Windows 7 was a highlight. But what struck me most was the amount of time devoted to virtualization, and especially VMware. Here are a few highlights:      Per Kevin Turner (Microsoft’s COO), VMware has changed their licensing scheme. Besides being very expensive, it’s not an easy upgrade path. So Microsoft will leverage this to their advantage—especially on price point—since one can get Hyper-V for free with Server 2008.  People have said that Hyper-V is too early in as a technology to decide on its being a viable alternative to VMware. Perhaps so. But 24 pts market share were taken from VMware with version 1.0 of Hyper-V alone. And now, Microsoft has Hyper-V R2 coming out with a new Live Migration feature to compete directly with VMware's core V-motion functionality.  Good enough to make one want to switch? I don’t know. But Microsoft has put a lot of thought into this. Check out their migration path: Using Microsoft’s new System Center console, one can run BOTH Hyper-V and VMware together. Microsoft views this as their “big differentiator” since VMware can't do the same.  This means with Hyper-V you will have the ease of having both products under "one pane of glass." So you don’t in fact need to give up your VMware if you wish to try both at once. Clever. 

Microsoft referred to this as "offering significant value at a fraction of the cost" (1/6th to be exact) and they showed the side by side pricing to prove it.  I am not really here to say this is right, wrong, good or bad—we deliver products for both platforms. But it does seem to me that the customer is the one who is coming out on top on this one. So it should be an interesting battle to watch.

[Derek De Vette is the VP Channel & Public Affairs]