Virtual possibilities

Hyper-V is probably the most talked about new feature in Server 2008. But with the hypervisor and management tools just emerging from beta, most organizations don't take Hyper-V seriously -- yet. "It's on our watch list, but not on the critical path to our virtualization strategy by any means," says Vanguard's Yale.

"Down the road, I think Microsoft will crush VMware, but they're far behind VMware at this point," says Okuma. He currently has 150 Windows servers, most of which are running virtualized Windows Server 2003 sessions on VMware products. Many of those virtual servers are "Tier 0" virtual machines, where server recovery would be time-consuming. "I would not move them to Hyper-V at this point," Okuma says.

"In 12 to 18 months, [Microsoft] will give VMware a run for their money," says Gartner's Enck. He thinks Microsoft will push Hyper-V into the enterprise through aggressive licensing practices. "It is very good at using the Microsoft license as a tool to shift the base," he says.

VMware also faces a competitive challenge from Microsoft for IT organizations that use more than one hypervisor. The new version of System Center Virtual Machine Manager, which offers some of the same tools found in VMware's VirtualCenter, will support not only Hyper-V but VMware ESX hypervisors as well when it's released later this year. And support for Xen is planned, according to Microsoft. VMware supports only its own hypervisor.

Right now, management tools are the No. 1 issue when it comes to virtualization, according to IDC. Microsoft's offering is not nearly as complete as VMware's, says Amarillo's Redman. But as it matures and the number of virtual machines under management continues to grow, System Center Virtual Machine Manager's flexibility will be increasingly attractive.

For now, however, most large companies are already committed to VMware. While 62 per cent of large-company respondents in the Computerworld survey said they were using VMware for virtualization, nearly half (45 per cent) of small companies and 29 per cent of midsize companies said they weren't using virtualization at all yet. Gartner estimates that the installed base for virtualization as a percentage of all servers in use is still somewhere around 10 per cent. That leaves plenty of room for Microsoft to move in.

"We think Microsoft will get big chunks of the market" and push out competitors, Enck says, leaving the market with two dominant players: VMware and Microsoft.

Scott Zimmerman, CIO at CenterPoint Properties, is using VMware to host six of the real estate development and management company's 25 Windows servers. Zimmerman says he's very interested possibly using Hyper-V. "Is it a viable substitute? We'll want to find out," he says.

The city of Amarillo, with 100 to 150 Windows servers, is just starting to look at virtualization, Redman says. He's interested in Hyper-V but wants to see a broad community of support surrounding it before he'll consider deployment. "With VMware, a lot of people can help," he says.

Chad Mawson, IT manager at law firm Woods & Aitken agrees. He says he's seen "bits and pieces" of information on Microsoft's virtualization technology but notes that "there doesn't seem to be any real community base."

Overcoming VMware's entrenched position and customer loyalty won't be easy. "We're probably going to stick with VMware unless there's a huge price differential," Mawson says, noting that his ESX virtual machines are "incredibly stable." VMware isn't cheap, but that doesn't keep him up at night. "We get a good value for our money," he says.