Stories about: Connectix

Mike Neil, Microsoft's general manager of virtualization, is on the big stage with a hot technology. The lights are on him as he prepares for next year's delivery of Windows Server Virtualization, which first was a feature and now is an add-on to Windows Server 2008. Neil, who joined Microsoft four years ago as part of the Connectix acquisition, recently talked with Network World Senior Editor John Fontana about critics, competition, licensing and feature delays.

This is part two in a three-part series of articles debunking some common myths about the GPL's reach and highlighting the sensible solution that the Linux community has constructed despite these myths. This part applies the body of court cases to the GPL, outlining the framework of the "gentleman's agreement" struck by commercial and non-commercial Linux developers.

Microsoft has further upped the ante in its competition with VMware -- the dominant virtualization vendor for x86 servers -- by making its Virtual PC product into a free download, and introducing more permissive licence conditions for Windows Vista.

Virtualization-related announcements were flying at this year's LinuxWorld Conference and Expo in Boston. Given a flurry of new products and initiatives from the likes of Virtual Iron, VMware, and XenSource, I guess it should have come as no surprise that Microsoft would throw its hat into the ring. What is surprising, however, is just how much of an about-face Microsoft seems to have made.

Microsoft has disclosed that the initial service pack of bug fixes planned for its Virtual Server 2005 software will be replaced by a for-fee R2 upgrade by year's end.

Microsoft has fleshed out the details of a plan to build virtualisation capabilities directly into Windows as part of its effort to catch up to virtualization software market leader VMware.

While EMC subsidiary VMware has garnered the bulk of attention regarding server virtualization, a slew of vendors are looking to address what they see as rising demand for this server consolidation technique.

Microsoft next month will release Virtual Server 2005, its first foray into server virtualization and a key element of the broad management platform the company is creating for Windows.

Microsoft has made available a Release Candidate 1 (RC1) version of Virtual Server 2005, getting a step closer to final release of the delayed product.

Dell on Monday announced plans to expand its partnership with storage vendor EMC by supporting EMC subsidiary VMware's ESX Server, VMotion and VirtualCenter Management Server software on certain configurations of Dell's server and storage systems.

On the heels of a similar announcement from Microsoft, VMWare is rolling out a virtual server aimed at corporate users looking to carry out departmental level server consolidations and at corporate developers wanting to streamline their development and testing environments.