Is the Time for VMware in the SMB Over?
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@coliver said:
I've used ESXi and Hyper-V in production environments, both now and in the past, I use XenServer for my home lab. In all honesty I haven't found a major difference in any of the three. I will say that XenServer has been far more stable then ESXi or Hyper-V, although that is in a non-production environment.
XenServer, being really just an interface and installer for Xen, has Xen to work with as a base and Xen is basically on par far as maturity with VMware vSphere but is used not be medium sized businesses that struggle to run something else, but by the world's most advanced environments (Amazon, IBM, Rackspace, etc.) so the battle testing, enterprise readiness and engineering support is likely second to none and it has had nearly as long as anyone to put that into action. VMware has to do the same work but without the benefit of those massive cloud environments and vendors to back them, and do it all on their own without the benefits of open source. HyperV and KVM are younger which presents its own challenges.
It's really not surprising that Xen is crazy reliable given that the most demanding environments in the world have been choosing it since the beginning.
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@garak0410 said:
I am nowhere near an expert in this areas but before coming to a SMB, I worked in a huge enterprise with a petabyte+ of SAN storage and we had ESX VM's all over the place...there were some redundancy issues when it came to some SAN errors in the firmware but overall, ESX was pretty solid.
It's very solid. It is a great product with great engineering behind it. But being closed source and very expensive and lacking any differentiating features leaves it in a position of "when would we choose this" in the current environment of mature, feature-rich competition that is free?
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You do need SCCM for some of the Hyper-V features to compare with the paid versions of Vshpere.
The job I've currently been interviewing for is all Vsphere with multiple 42TB SANs. About 10 hosts at the main site. And more than enough servers to failover to with at the 16 other sites, along with Dell app assure replicating between multiple sites. They do have some SANs tied in to azure as well and replicating there. About 8,000 employees in total (and this subsidiary, parent company has a lot more) so Id still call it a SMB.
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@thecreativeone91 said:
About 8,000 employees in total (and this subsidiary, parent company has a lot more) so Id still call it a SMB.
SMB typically is considered to cap around 500 employees. SME at around 2,000. 8,000 is normally considered a "large" business but not quite enterprise which, I believe, is normally starting around 10,000.
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As a subsidiary of that size, it sounds like a "large" subsidiary of an enterprise.
I've worked for 350 person divisions of a Fortune 10. But at the end of the day, we were still an enterprise.
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The real question here is will VMware realize this, and give away more for free, or will they stick to their guns and try to convince people there product is better?
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@Aaron-Studer said:
The real question here is will VMware realize this, and give away more for free, or will they stick to their guns and try to convince people there product is better?
I doubt they have to change much of anything at this point, in the future they will try to rebuild their licensing to reflect this new competition. There are so many VMWare users out there that wouldn't switch to anything else. I've talked to several of them who said I was stupid for deploying Hyper-V when ESXi is so inexpensive.
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@Aaron-Studer said:
The real question here is will VMware realize this, and give away more for free, or will they stick to their guns and try to convince people there product is better?
It's a good question but VMware is caught in a difficult position - VMware sells a product that is otherwise free in the rest of the industry. This means that they cannot give it away or their entire revenue base is literally gone overnight and they have no way to make money. Microsoft, Xen and KVM all have good reasons to be free and have no need to make money from virtualization. VMware is the opposite.
This is the same problem that caught Windows in the face of Linux. Linux, being free and open source, was able to take over the server market in just ten years and while Windows still plays a very large role, the dominance of a paid option evaporated very, very quickly and holding onto the piece of the pie that they have is based primarily on having a ton of very unique options built into the product and relying on the perception that their competition is complex. VMware lacks both of those things.
VMware's only real hope, that I can see, is to figure out how to make their product so much better that they are worth the money. Otherwise, they are pretty much stuck. They can't be free and they can't really be easier to use than their competition.
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@coliver said:
I doubt they have to change much of anything at this point, in the future they will try to rebuild their licensing to reflect this new competition. There are so many VMWare users out there that wouldn't switch to anything else. I've talked to several of them who said I was stupid for deploying Hyper-V when ESXi is so inexpensive.
Much like the Windows versus Linux crowd. Linux can provide nearly any service that Windows can, but the Windows deployment density is heavily (but not entirely) based on having a huge user base that refuses to learn something new or is afraid of change or needs to play politics rather than being financially advantageous to the company.
Windows, like vSphere, is an excellent product. But the cost for it and the other caveats (licensing overhead, audit risks, extra manual labour, deeper knowledge needed, legal concerns) make it very, very hard to justify.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Aaron-Studer said:
The real question here is will VMware realize this, and give away more for free, or will they stick to their guns and try to convince people there product is better?
It's a good question but VMware is caught in a difficult position - VMware sells a product that is otherwise free in the rest of the industry. This means that they cannot give it away or their entire revenue base is literally gone overnight and they have no way to make money. Microsoft, Xen and KVM all have good reasons to be free and have no need to make money from virtualization. VMware is the opposite.
This is the same problem that caught Windows in the face of Linux. Linux, being free and open source, was able to take over the server market in just ten years and while Windows still plays a very large role, the dominance of a paid option evaporated very, very quickly and holding onto the piece of the pie that they have is based primarily on having a ton of very unique options built into the product and relying on the perception that their competition is complex. VMware lacks both of those things.
VMware's only real hope, that I can see, is to figure out how to make their product so much better that they are worth the money. Otherwise, they are pretty much stuck. They can't be free and they can't really be easier to use than their competition.
VMware could easily go the free with paid support option... there are no companies that are doing support for free at this point in time... although they would lose out on less then half their revenue stream.
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@Aaron-Studer said:
The real question here is will VMware realize this, and give away more for free, or will they stick to their guns and try to convince people there product is better?
Add more features or even lower pricing is likely. Free doubtful. They are suppose to be adding things like more virtual networking, in built firewalls and virtual routers etc.
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Windows, unlike VMware, has the advantage of a massive third party ecosystem that is unique and Microsoft is able to derive value from many different sources like their desktops, MS Office, Office 365, Azure, etc. Microsoft is well aware that the Windows Server value proposition is getting to be very lean and is rapidly diversifying and focusing on higher level platforms to mitigate this risk. This is the nature of the closed source, commodity platform beast and they know it well. Windows Server served them well for a long time but it cannot last forever and will not.
In time, Windows Server cost will drop until it is not a revenue stream and, hopefully they will wisely go free and license free at that time so that it remains an incredibly bit of technology and will regain much of its lost market share. It might even go open source at that point, but that is a difficult thing to do with code that was never intended to be opened.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@coliver said:
I doubt they have to change much of anything at this point, in the future they will try to rebuild their licensing to reflect this new competition. There are so many VMWare users out there that wouldn't switch to anything else. I've talked to several of them who said I was stupid for deploying Hyper-V when ESXi is so inexpensive.
Much like the Windows versus Linux crowd. Linux can provide nearly any service that Windows can, but the Windows deployment density is heavily (but not entirely) based on having a huge user base that refuses to learn something new or is afraid of change or needs to play politics rather than being financially advantageous to the company.
Windows, like vSphere, is an excellent product. But the cost for it and the other caveats (licensing overhead, audit risks, extra manual labour, deeper knowledge needed, legal concerns) make it very, very hard to justify.
No argument there, the Windows proposition seems to be getting more and more hard to justify with "cloud" models readily available.
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@coliver said:
VMware could easily go the free with paid support option... there are no companies that are doing support for free at this point in time... although they would lose out on less then half their revenue stream.
That's true, but seems unlikely. The revenue drop is probably more than they could withstand. Citrix is already doing this model, as is Microsoft. VMware lacks the additional revenue to make this work, I think.
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@mlnews said:
@coliver said:
VMware could easily go the free with paid support option... there are no companies that are doing support for free at this point in time... although they would lose out on less then half their revenue stream.
That's true, but seems unlikely. The revenue drop is probably more than they could withstand. Citrix is already doing this model, as is Microsoft. VMware lacks the additional revenue to make this work, I think.
You think a crucial part of their revenue comes from new installs? I would assume that is minuscule compared to their on-going support/licensing. They are also spreading into attached markets with their VDI manager/infrastructure, Horizon.
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@coliver said:
You think a crucial part of their revenue comes from new installs? I would assume that is minuscule compared to their on-going support/licensing. They are also spreading into attached markets with their VDI manager/infrastructure, Horizon.
Ongoing licensing is part of that same revenue. Both new installs and ongoing licensing would evaporate together.
For Essentials, support is not even included as it is. The "paid support" model is already there and they still are charging for the initial install as well as ongoing licensing.
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@coliver said:
@mlnews said:
@coliver said:
VMware could easily go the free with paid support option... there are no companies that are doing support for free at this point in time... although they would lose out on less then half their revenue stream.
That's true, but seems unlikely. The revenue drop is probably more than they could withstand. Citrix is already doing this model, as is Microsoft. VMware lacks the additional revenue to make this work, I think.
You think a crucial part of their revenue comes from new installs? I would assume that is minuscule compared to their on-going support/licensing. They are also spreading into attached markets with their VDI manager/infrastructure, Horizon.
There VDI stuff isn't used much. XenDesktop is a way better VDI solution than VMware's. Also when has anyone needed to use support? Seems pretty rare. It's about like calling Microsoft support. Never need it. I've heard stories online of some people neededing it but don't know anyone who has.
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@coliver said:
They are also spreading into attached markets with their VDI manager/infrastructure, Horizon.
How valuable is that likely to remain if businesses are forced to "do VDI with another vendor", "do VDI with VMware and everything else with someone else" or "have a uniform environment?"
I think that VDI and Horizon will do little for them, long term, because the value to that rapidly erodes in the light of everything else. And SMBs do very little VDI and by the time that they do, VMware will already not exist in their market.
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@thecreativeone91 said:
There VDI stuff isn't used much. XenDesktop is a way better VDI solution than VMware's. Also when has anyone needed to use support? Seems pretty rare. It's about like calling Microsoft support. Never need it. I've heard stories online of some people neededing it but don't know anyone who has.
That pretty much sums it up for me. There is better VDI available from the free players which allows you to have a lower cost, lower risk, uniform virtualization environment on top of the alternative VDI.
And support I totally agree. If you have an MSP partner, it is they who would use support and not the customer and they have heavy interest in being competent rather than spending money on support whenever possible. Internal IT running one of these products should not need support and the community support is very good if needed. These are super simple products. The only places I see spending money on support are huge enterprises with deep pockets and only do so because of a combination of playing politics (having someone else to blame is better than doing the right thing for the business) or hiding the incompetence of the department (spending a fortune on "support" to hide the fact that the vendor is doing the work instead of the IT guys.)
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@thecreativeone91 said:
@coliver said:
@mlnews said:
@coliver said:
VMware could easily go the free with paid support option... there are no companies that are doing support for free at this point in time... although they would lose out on less then half their revenue stream.
That's true, but seems unlikely. The revenue drop is probably more than they could withstand. Citrix is already doing this model, as is Microsoft. VMware lacks the additional revenue to make this work, I think.
You think a crucial part of their revenue comes from new installs? I would assume that is minuscule compared to their on-going support/licensing. They are also spreading into attached markets with their VDI manager/infrastructure, Horizon.
There VDI stuff isn't used much. XenDesktop is a way better VDI solution than VMware's. Also when has anyone needed to use support? Seems pretty rare. It's about like calling Microsoft support. Never need it. I've heard stories online of some people neededing it but don't know anyone who has.
I haven't had the opportunity to play with VDI much... although I applied for a job that works with Horizon. I can understand where XenDesktop comes into play though it is a very mature software from what I have seen.
Good point on the support, I guess I am looking at a hypervisor as a fragile piece of software when all my experience points to the exact opposite.
