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Ask HN: Is VMware Doomed?

2 points by wslh ↗ HN
I just installed Hyper-V for free in my free Windows 10 update. A VM with Ubuntu Desktop is installing right now.

Before realizing Hyper-V was included in Windows 10, I rechecked VMware Player and it is not free anymore so I planned to follow the typical VirtualBox alternative that I like but it's behind VMware in graphical user experience. It is important to note that I had a VMware commercial subscription before but this subscription didn't enable me to receive major product upgrades while my MSDN subscription gives me access to all the Microsoft software.

So, while Microsoft is making free software in the virtualization sector, VMware is restricting customers (and the VM community) access to the latest software. This is why I think VMware is doomed and this is not a criticism of their software quality. There are also other market factors that don't help.

What do you think?

4 comments

[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 12.1 ms ] thread
detaro
Their money is in servers, not desktop products. VMWare Workstation clearly is priced for special use-cases (and as a client for the servers) and doesn't even attempt to compete with the free offerings.

Their server side is under rising pressure, but they are far from doomed.

WaltPurvis
No, VMware is not doomed. They hold a position of extraordinary dominance in the hypervisor market. They're no more doomed by free hypervisors than Microsoft was doomed by free versions of Linux.

They don't care about random individuals who want to run a VM on their PCs; that's not where they make money. And where they do make money the pressure from free hypervisors basically amounts to reducing their total monopoly and obscene profits to a mere near-monopoly and healthy profits.

wslh
> They don't care about random individuals who want to run a VM on their PCs

Even average individuals are random. But beyond this discussion, and adding another argument to the premise, don't you think that VMware is failing in the cloud not having their own AWS/Azure/Google App offering?

shokk
Hyper-V is lightyears behind VMware in all features beyond that free little Player product - that's not even Microsoft or VMware's focus. Thanks, but I'll stick with the leader in bare metal hypervisors for my virtualization.