Virtualization start-ups hit reset button

Virtual Iron and XenSource both have altered course with their virtualization products, which is software that lets a single computer run multiple operating systems simultaneously. Virtual Iron has scrapped its own virtualization software in favor of the open-source Xen project. Meanwhile, the leader of that project, XenSource, is steering away from management tools and aiming squarely for virtualization leader VMware.

The two companies are describing their new strategies at the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo in Boston this week. And with more news in the area from VMware, Microsoft's Virtual Server group and SWsoft, the show might well be called VirtualizationWorld.

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, VMware executives might blush at the strikingly similar rhetoric from Virtual Iron and XenSource.

"The market really wants a competitor to VMware," said Simon Crosby, XenSource's co-founder and chief technology officer.

"It's time for a company to step up and be a viable commercial competitor to VMware," said Virtual Iron Chief Executive John Thibault.

It's no surprise why competitors are angling for advantage. A February Forrester survey of 1,221 customers with at least 1,000 employees found that 41 percent of North American customers are using virtualization already or are planning pilot tests. And 60 percent plan to spend more money on the technology in the next 12 months.

VMware leads the market, the study found, with 43 percent of customers considering it most often for x86 server virtualization, compared with 24 percent for Windows Virtual Server. Xen "is not yet on the radar for customers," the report said.

Virtualization, in the form most widely discussed these days, lets a computer run many operating systems simultaneously and therefore lets administrators replace several largely idle servers with one efficiently used machine. The technology works by fooling programs into thinking that they're running on real hardware, when they actually are running on a virtual layer called a hypervisor.

That sleight-of-hand means that operating systems can share the same hardware, or be moved while running from one computer to another to cope with hardware failure or new processing demands.

Virtualization is an established feature in higher-end servers. Now, since it's arriving in mainstream models with x86 chips from Intel and Advanced Micro Devices, companies like Virtual Iron and XenSource are trying to commercialize it as a stand-alone technology.

A big change coming with virtualization support from AMD and Intel means that virtualization companies today can sidestep some of clever engineering techniques VMware employs. AMD Virtualization, set to debut in months, and Intel's corresponding VT, which started arriving in 2005, permit Xen to run an unmodified operating system. In practice, that means Xen can run Microsoft Windows as well as Linux.

The side effect is that VMware will be getting more direct competition from XenSource and Virtual Iron. But that's not all: Another start-up called Parallels also hopes to give VMware a run for its money.

Its $50 hypervisor-based Parallels Workstation 2.1 product runs on Windows and Linux desktop machines right now, and the company plans to launch a midrange server product in mid-2006 and a high-end server product in late 2006, Marketing Manager Benjamin Rudolph said.

Lining up at LinuxWorld
VMware is looking to sustain its leadership in part by opening up interfaces to control virtual machines and making its basic virtual machine software free. And Monday at LinuxWorld, it plans to announce a related move: The EMC subsidiary is offering its virtual machine disk format specification to all comers for royalty-free use. The format competes with Microsoft's VHD specification and Xen's XVM.

Several announcements on virtualization moves are expected at LinuxWorld, which has morphed substantially since it began in the 1990s, following the growing impact of open-source software. The conference's annual East Coast edition runs Monday through Thursday in Boston.

In addition to exhibitors touting operating system-related technologies, representatives from open-source databases and middleware companies are also scheduled to attend. Sessions and keynotes will also cover the impact of open-source business models on the software industry overall, including one entitled "The Death of the Enterprise Software Business Model."

At LinuxWorld, IBM plans to announce services to help customers design, install and configure virtual machines as a way to consolidate Linux servers. It's a sign that Big Blue, a virtualization pioneer with its mainframe servers, is also trying to profit from the technology as it becomes mainstream.

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