Microsoft gets aggressive on virtualisation tools pricing

Microsoft is set to adopt a more aggressive pricing policy as it competes with VMware in the server virtualisation tool market.

VMware, part of storage group EMC, is a strong player in the server virtualisation segment and a rival to Microsoft.

"Microsoft can offer its virtualisation products at a third of the price charged by VMware and is able to provide virtual solutions that compare with VMware products," said Walid Abu-Habda, Microsoft's Corporate Vice-President, Developer and Platform Evangelism Group.

"We want to make our solutions pervasive across the enterprise environment."

Abu-Habda was speaking at the launch of Microsoft's Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008. Server virtualisation is a generalised term describing the ability to host multiple complete operating system (OS) images on a single hardware platform. Server virtualisation is often used to consolidate multiple smaller or older servers onto a single, large server without changing how the applications or OS are managed.

Market research company IDC says the use of server virtualisation is rising by 12 per cent a year globally and will double in four years.

"This is a very conservative figure as it's going to be much more than that," added Abu-Habda. "According to Microsoft studies in the Middle East the growth rate figure is somewhere below five per cent but is set to increase. New product lines have already been deployed and completed at some customer sites and many customers are considering them."

IDC's worldwide quarterly server virtualisation tracker indicates that the adoption of Microsoft Hyper-V is growing rapidly. The product had a market share of 23 per cent of new shipments when combined with Virtual Server 2005. With nearly 1.5 million copies of the Hyper-V prerelease version distributed globally, customer interest in virtualisation is moving from evaluation to the deployment phase.

As a feature of Windows Server 2008, Hyper-V is available as a free download. Hyper-V provides an optimised virtualisation solution for customers to consolidate workloads onto a single physical server or to run client operating systems in server-based virtual machines in the data centre. Management is the core component of virtualisation, and the Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager enables customers to configure and deploy new virtual machines and centrally manage their virtualised infrastructure.

Ahmer Hassan, Server and Tools, Business Group Lead, Microsoft Gulf, said: "Microsoft worked closely with its channel partners before the launch. It was essential to get them ahead of the curve so they could work easily with customers."

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