VMWare strikes deals which would embarass Sony
VMWare, the maker of virtualization software, is fighting a hard battle against Microsoft. Microsoft has all the money in the world in order to ruin the efforts of its fly-weight rival, and only MS’s lack of consideration for Linux prolonged VMWare’s very existence to this day. Thus VMWare decided to spend some of its small budget into some weird type of advertising. The VMWare people thought that paying HP or Dell to add their software to the servers they sell will help their cause. I see a few problems here.
- These servers will surely come with Microsoft’s server software, which includes, free of charge, the virtualization capabilities that VMWare would offer for an additional fee. Why would customers even bother asking for VMWare additions?
- These servers are expensive machines and are usually administered by highly paid people, who, even if not too bright, had already the understanding of how to go to www.vmware.com and download the software that they want. Why such bundling will increase the VMWare’s appeal to specialists?
- In any circumstance, HP or Dell sit on larger cash piles. All this story with taking from the poor and giving to the rich seems like a upside-down Robin Hood story. The hardware manufacturers could not care less about the meagre sums brought by VMWare, and will most likely place it at the very bottom of their offers, past than AMD and Linux-powered servers.
I pity VMWare since the alternatives from Microsoft and Citrix will probably make it a nice remembrance in 5-10 years time.
Why did I mention Sony? Because Sony paid BestBuy, the electronics retailer, to "recommend" Blu-Ray, Sony’s high capacity DVD format. Note that BestBuy only recommended the format, while still carrying the competition product (but supposedly "not recommending" that one). What did Sony get from it? Think of how many people decide on which expensive (300-500 dollars) devices to buy, based on the advice of the merchandisers from BestBuy, Altex, MediaMarkt, or Fotovista. For example, how many expensive things did you buy because they were recommended by BestBuy?