Microsoft Openly Challenges VMware In New Ad
Microsoft vs Apple in the consumer segment is a well known battle and Microsoft has taken charge with it’s I’M A PC campaign which has been successful, unfortunately the same cannot be said about the response by Apple. Anyway, in the corporate sector Microsoft has competition from VMware and here Microsoft has the upper hand, after an open war of words between heads of both companies and Microsoft’s new massive New Efficiency campaign, Microsoft is targeting & challenging VMware openly in a new ad, they’re making no bones about it and are directly calling out VMware as an expensive and not as feature rich solution to Server Virtualization. Point blank stating that their solutions are more cost effective than VMware.
The ad surprised me ‘coz the only the other company I’ve seen so blatantly calling out their competitor’s name is Apple, in their Mac vs PC ads. Here’s the ad:
Check out around 30 seconds into the video :D
Honestly, I love the ad, it seems very much like Apple’s Mac vs PC ads with a chilled out casual guy dissing the competitor. This is the Microsoft I want to see. Here’s to another battle to be fought by ads, waiting for VMware’s response, if any.
“Virtualization. It’s never been easier.”
With VMware.
I see they are very careful with their words using things like “on par” with VMware, and “can cost less” (but we know it probably won’t if you want VMware like functionality). They and the rest of your educated readers know Microsoft can’t come close to the stability, features, and performance that VMware can.
Mr. Softy always like the “me too” attitude. Come on invent something and then brag about it.
Completely agree…with the comments. I’ve been running VMware for a decade and TRYING to switch to a MS product for as long as they’ve had one, and failing at every step of the way.
The MS product simply doesn’t have the stability, true functionality, featureset or the performance of VMware…period.
The only reason the MS product can manage the VMware product is that VMware published the API (something MS is notorious for not doing…hmmm, interesting). If you want to have a true head to head comparison MS, publish your API and let VMware into YOUR world.
Open letter time: While I admit I haven’t tried R2 since it went final I’ll also admit I’m no longer willing to try it. I’ve been working with you people since VirtualServer (when I actually worked AT MS) and I’m tired of giving you the benefit of the doubt. You want me to use Virtual Server? Buy VMware and then shut them down.
“The MS product simply doesn’t have the stability, true functionality, featureset or the performance of VMware…period.”
Sorry, but this is just FUD. We recently switched from Hyper-V 2008 to 2008 R2 which really adds quite a bit of functionality that appeals to someone like me (a network admin for a nonprofit). Performance and stability have NEVER been an issue. Yes, the featureset, and functionality might not be quite ‘on par’ with VMWare, but it’s pretty darned close for me…
I found this link which sums up the differences: http://www.milesconsultingcorp.com/Hyper-V-versus-VMware-Comparison.ASPX
I also found this interesting article noting the differences in the two companies approach to virtualization: http://it20.info/blogs/main/archive/2009/03/19/196.aspx
I absolutely love how you quote the part of my comment that backs up your comment and declare it FUD (which stands for Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) which is a patently false statement. Yet you ignore the portion of my comment that renders the first portion of your actual comment impotent. If I was afraid of it I wouldn’t have spent 5 years constantly trying to use it. If I was uncertain I wouldn’t have made an assertion. If I was in doubt I wouldn’t be certain.
I also admit, freely, that I haven’t used the R2 version and have just plain given up on trying to use the MS product. In my experience, which is empirical evidence and not anecdotal from my point of view, ESX is in fact more stable than the non R2 version of Hyper-v; ESX is more efficient in memory management and CPU resource management than the non R2 version of Hyper-V; ESX has features that the non R2 version of Hyper-V simply DOES NOT HAVE and if I have to use MSCS clustering for HA all bets are off.
Let me state, one more time, for the record, again, that I haven’t used 2008 R2 Hyper-V but that’s by choice and not out of F, or U or D. I run 1800 virtualized machines on 70 ESX servers and that number will only increase next year. I will also freely admit that a large investment in/with VMware is driving the decision to stay with VMware but every time we turn around MS is saying “We can do that too” and not the other way around. I have yet to have our VMware rep say or even imply that they’ve finally got a feature that MS has had all along.
And frankly, I have so many management and monitoring tools in the environment already that I don’t need another one to monitor and manage my virtual world AND my physical world. Hands off thank you very much, and I say that to all the hypervisor vendors, not just MS. I’ve told that to VMware and Citrix (Xen). Focus on what you do and do it well, quit doing stuff half way and then selling it and patching it the rest of the way into existence, it’s driving the rest of us crazy.
Finally someone is bold enough to stand up and speak.
No Microsoft are not vetrians and they are after a different sector of the market but I am tired of hearing about vmware and how great it is when I have to buy the highest version just to get live migration (lets not even go into central management) things that every other player does for free!
Yes if you are runnign a large datacentre with multiple sites etc and millions in budget then go ahead but if you have a few physical servers then vmware is a stupid decision.
I used hyper-v and am now on xen as I needed more functionally before r2 was available.
Oh and as for the api funny how I can live migrate between hyper-v and xenserver hosts no problem etc.
We all know that vmware has no intention of addressing the small market. just the fact that it has taken this long to get load ballanced iscsi shows that.
I dont dislike vmware I am just saying it is for a different market!
I currently use vSphere4 in a production environment (migrated from ESX 3.5) and have put the Hyper-V product side by side to see what it’s all about. From a technical aspect, VMware outperformed the MS product everytime. In fact, out of the box, VMware is much easier to configure during setup than the MS product is. Why is that? Yes, it could be that that VMware released it API to the world or it could be that VMware has been in the virtual business a lot longer than Microsoft has. If I were evaluating a product from either of these companies, I would definitely be concerned about the length of time that either company has been successful with this technology. Let’s see where MS is in a few years with virtualization.