Today I came across yet another of Gartner’s famous magic quadrants
however this one caught my eye as it showed changes over a 5 year period.
The technology being measured was “x86 Server Virtualization” and as
you can see from the graphic below, it shows some rather interesting patterns.
Being the proud VMware supporter that I am, I
straight away looked to identify where VMware sat on the quadrant and as
expected, it has consistently remained a leader and visionary in the x86 Server
Virtualization market.
However, it’s hard not to notice the “worm”
appearing beneath VMware – that “worm” is Microsoft and if VMware were an
apple, I’d say they need to be very wary of this ominous advance into the
leader/visionary segment of the quadrant!
5 years ago, Microsoft’s Hyper-v product
started to get attention. It still lacked a fair amount of functionality that
was available in vSphere at that point in time (ESX 4.0). Back in 2009 we saw
support for 1TB of host memory, virtual distributed switching and thin
provisioning – something Microsoft Hyper-v could only dream of.
Now, taking off my ‘techie hat’ for a minute
and looking at this from an IT Manager’s perspective where IT spend is equally
as important as technology capabilities I would start to question the viability
of a Hyper-v solution? After all, the ‘magic quadrant’ shows that VMware and
Microsoft are now almost inline and judging from Microsoft’s current trajectory
paired with its aggressive license packaging deals, I’d start giving it serious
consideration for my datacenter strategy… I know that any person involved in IT
infrastructure discussions will have come across this! However, these
conversations are usually lacking any real depth or argument but seem to be
coming up more and more.
The important thing to remember though is
that this quadrant only looks at x86 Server Virtualization and as we all know,
this market is slowly but surely becoming commoditized. VMware has realized
this and are now moving beyond compute virtualization to a much more complete
vision that seeks to virtualize the entire datacenter and automate many of the
manual datacenter tasks that exist today.
With this, the key to VMware’s success
continuing is ensuring that the SDDC messaging is broadcast loud and clear to
it’s 500,000+ customers. It’s also important to remember that the SDDC vision
isn’t just for enterprise customers and should be marketed toward all customer
tiers. Unless they do this, they are at risk of losing a large portion of the
SMB and mid tier market.
Here are some ideas that I believe will help
with this:
- · Enable NSX to be consumed by SMB / Mid-tier customers with a model that works for them (modular growth options through the NSX stack and tiered pricing to match)
- · Utilizing VSAN to help deliver the overall SDDC messaging
- · Leveraging converged compute models and package software with these
- · Making the operations and management capabilities stock standard for SMB’s when consuming VMware products (vCOP’s in particular)
Personally, one of the key areas that I
believe will help VMware’s continued success is the ability to enable a true
hybrid cloud solution for customers and with vCHS coming online within the next
12 months, they will be able to recognize a whole new angle to their product
offerings.
Also, on a side note I’d also like to draw
attention to Citrix who; judging by the current ‘hook’ in their trajectory,
look to be preparing for a fishing trip into the lower depths of Gartner’s
Quadrant – I think it’s fair to say that Xen Server has lost it’s way and wont
be a serious competitor at least in the short term.
The next 5 years for x86 Server
Virtualization will be very interesting, not only from the traditional
competitive stance but also with technologies like Docker coming online.
I believe that VMware are ready for these
challenges, which is shown through their continued innovation and acquisition
choices. However, as mentioned above they need to be mindful of their peers in
the quadrant and ensure that the SDDC vision is cast far and wide.
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