Search

Other View On The Commoditization of the Hypervisor

Thursday, 24 April 2008 by Michel Roth

I am a strong believer that virtualization is going to be one the biggest gamechangers we have seen in IT so far. Or has this already happended. One of the key factors in this (future) succes of virtualization is the commoditization of the Hypervisor. With this omnipresence of hypervisors and other virtualization solution, the true challenge in IT remains the same: management. One of the developments that lies just beyond the horizon that will accelerate the commoditization of the hypervisor even more are the embedded hypervisors. I've written about this before when Dell hinted that they would be giving ESX 3i away for free. Joe Foran has revisited this thought in a very good article: "Hypervisors are destined to become a commodity item, even more so than other software, because everyone will be utilizing virtualization within the next few years. Dell and VMware aren’t reacting so much to competition from Virtual Iron, Hyper-Hype (oops, I mean Hyper-V) or Virtuozzo as they are to Phoenix’s Hyperspace and Xen’s Embedded offering. Hyperspace is the big target here, as it’s embedded virtualization from a BIOS manufacturer...

VMware saw this coming. They anticipated the inevitable, embedded hypervisor, which is why 3i came out in the first place. They also know that we, the computer consuming public, don’t really consider the BIOS when we buy a computer (be it a personal machine or a server.) We don’t even realize that we pay for the BIOS, because BIOS builders charge chip- and board-level makers a licensing fee. That licensing fee per machine is passed on to us in the cost of the board, and it’s minimal.

I am convinced this is where virtualization is headed: Virtualization will be a commodity, practically free for all without needing much to install or configure after the fact. VMware is betting on this core hypervisor as a lead-in to it’s flagship products. I expect them to focus this new strategy around transitioning customers from base-level embedded hypervisor to high-end pricing on management, replication, storage, etc."

Read Joe's entire article here.