VMPlayer and Standards

From ChipLog: (hat tip to Virtualization.info)

There has been a lot of excitement about VMware Player on Slashdot and other sites. I’ve also seen many people talk about it on IRC and some have messaged me with questions. Namely, what’s the catch? Why give away our virtualization platform? Are the VMs DRMed? Will they expire? Do they not work as well as in Workstation?

There’s no catch. This is the same virtualization platform we use in Workstation. The VMs are the same VMs. They won’t expire. They should work just as well in the Player as they do in Workstation.

Now, as to the question of why we’re doing this. Eventually, virtualization will be everywhere.

This goes back to what I said yesterday. (It’s nice to know I wasn’t totally out in left field.) Staying ahead of the pack in terms of innovation should remain VMware’s focus. Relying upon the established products to maintain profits only leads to where Novell and Microsoft Office division got themselves. Both Novell and Microsoft relied its existing product to garner renewal license business, but innovation was slow to be realized.

VMware has now put a line in the proverbial sand that reliance on simply being able to virtualized is no longer enough. Take that, Xensource, and your aspirations. You must be able to do that and X. To keep pushing X will be where their future profits lay — not in simply being able to encapsulate a system into a single vmdk file. I must say the movement to standards and openness is all for the good as well. Get your virtual infrastructure the standard for all future products, and no longer do you have to worry about compatibility with others since you and IEEE just helped define the standard. Going back to analogy, PDF files are the key example of this. Adobe doesn’t have to worry about new common standard replacing it as more and more products are being able to settle upon PDF has THE portable document standard (even Microsoft Office).