VMware going for the whole stack
9/17/2010VMware seems to be working hard at vertically integrating everything a company might need to create their own internal clouds. They've made monitoring and Java stack purchases, and now they seem to be buying SuSE from Novell .
My company uses a lot of VMware. They're actually trying to move everything that's not nailed down to a VMware cluster. Since they're about the most conservative company imaginable, it must be part of a wider trend. They're not ever known for being cutting edge. For VMware, it's an obvious move. They don't want to be the company that's only known for running legacy Windows apps so the IT world can move on. They need to create a new stack .
Microsoft's problems continue to mount. Besieged on all sides, Windows looks destined to become a legacy OS. New applications on Windows are not killer apps, those are web applications nowadays. Nothing current is written for Windows-only, and they lost their bid to control the browser market.
In the not-to-distant future, I can see their dream of giant VMware clusters serving not only legacy Windows apps for the enterprise, but also a private cloud for deploying desktop applications. Is a desktop renaissance in our future?