Server Virtualization Software: VMware Is Head And Shoulders Above The Rest

VMware in the past year has been facing growing pressure from Microsoft, which has been aggressively touting the lower cost of its virtualization solution. Microsoft has been winning customers as a result of the economic downturn, but VMware believes its early start in virtualization, combined with a heavy focus on research and development, will continue to set it apart from the pack.

VMware has been in the virtualization business for more than a decade, and with a current user base in excess of 120,000 customers, offers a mature and stable platform, said Ben Matheson, senior director of partner marketing. "Our product at this point is rock-solid and reliable. We have customers that have been running our server virtualization platform without issues for thousands of days," said Matheson.

In addition to mature technology, the broad VMware partner ecosystem, which includes the major server OEMs as well as many storage and networking vendors, lets VMware's server virtualization solution play well in a wide range of environments, Matheson said. Indeed, that was reflected in the high ARC survey score VMware achieved in the compatibility and ease of integration criteria.

"VMware has not only been innovating, they've also been picking up the pace of their innovation," said Steve Kaplan, vice president of the data center virtualization practice at INX, a Houston-based solution provider.