The enterprise has to deal with a mixed bag of virtualization vendors…

A couple of weeks ago, I was at Oracle Open World and attended a good session on JRockit (JRockit: What’s new & What’s coming).  The presenters were from JRockit lab in Sweden, and they presented many things from  new features, JVM performance, JRockit Mission Control (JRMC), JRockit Real Time (JRRT), and JRockit Virtual Edition (JRVE).   JRVE is a JVM that sits directly on bare metal hypervisor (it eliminates the OS layer, thus offering better performance, and simplification in terms of installation, configuration and maintenance).

Back in the BEA days, they showed a prototype of WLS VE running on JRVE at VMWorld in 2007.   That version was running on VMWare’s ESX.  With this version, it only supports and is certified on Oracle VM… Not a big surprise, if you think about it.  Since Oracle’s acquisition of Virtual Iron, Oracle has been optimizing its stack on its own virtualization infrastructure…

I was talking to a customer the other day to ask them about their Virtualization strategy.  This is large company that has deployed different types of servers and OS for different kinds of workload.  Currently, for Microsoft platform, they are using VMWare (when I asked him about Hyper-V, he said no plans yet).  For Linux, they are standardizing on RHT Enterprise Virtualization (KVM)… Oh, not to forget, on the mainframe, they are using zVM.

It occurred to me there is already a myriad of different virtualization tools and technologies deployed in the enterprise.  With Oracle’s solution strategy, there will be compelling reasons for many to deploy yet another virtualization technology in their environment (i.e. Oracle PaaS).  Furthermore, in addition to virtual machines and appliances deployed within the enterprise, many enterprises that adopt Cloud computing (hybrid clouds) will have to deal with additional virtualization infrastructures (i.e. EC2), their set of provisioning APIs and other management interfaces… 

The good news is that major virtualization vendors already support DTMF standardization efforts (i.e. OVF, VMAN) in their solutions or plan to support it.  There are also new standardization efforts around open APIs (i.e. vCloud) to abstract the virtualization technology, and provide a standard programming model to provision and consume virtual resources as well as support those interoperability use cases in the hybrid Clouds…  On the other side of spectrum, there is a growing number of virtualization vendors with provisioning solutions to facilitate packaging, grouping of related VMs (i.e. vApp)  for multi-tiered applications.

So, I don’t think most enterprises can standardize on a single virtualization vendor.  The trick is to figure out a virtualization management strategy that provides unified visibility and control in terms of asset & configuration management as well as infrastructure operation and governance.  Let me know what you think…

Linux Foundation Report

Following my post on VMWare’s acquisition of SpringSource, a friend of mine alerted me to the latest report from Linux Foundation. It contains various statistics on the Kernel development including contributors (both individuals & vendors). On page 11, it shows Red Hat as #1, followed by IBM, Novell, Intel…

With all this investment and involvement, Red Hat’s virtualization strategy, and not to forget Xen and vendors like Citrix, I think competitive pressure on VMWare will intensify much more in the next 12 – 18 months…

VMWare’s acquisition of SpringSource

Last week, VMWare announced that it had entered into an agreement to acquire SpringSource, an open-source enterprise Java vendor. This was a significant development, because SpringSource brings new assets and capabilities beyond virtualization to VMWare (i.e. CloudFoundry).

In VMWare’s press release, the motivation for the acquisition is described as follows: “Together, VMware and SpringSource plan to further innovate and develop integrated Platform as a Service (PaaS) solutions that can be hosted at customer datacenters or at cloud service providers.“

I think the acquisition was also influenced by Red Hat’s virtualization strategy, Linux-based virtualization (KVM), its open-source approach to virtualization management (libvirt, oVirt, Thincrust…) and how it’s rallying the open source community around Cloud Computing… Also, Red Hat offers a complete middleware stack (JBoss, MRG), Systems Management solutions (Red Hat Network Satellite, JBoss Operations Network). Acquisition of SpringSource enables VMWare to compete with Red Hat and offer customers an alternative.

Who is SpringSource?

SpringSource created and leads the open source Spring framework. They offer a set of tools + consulting & support to facilitate the enterprise adoption of Spring and related open-source technologies. They are very active in other open-source projects and industry groups (Tomcat, Groovy, Grails, OSGi…)

Here are a few highlights:

• Open source leadership – Many of the Spring & Tomcat committers work for SpringSource. By acquisition, SpringSource also leads Groovy & Grails.
• Spring has excellent traction in the enterprise. Some of SpringSource’s customers include JP Morgan, Wells Fargo, LinkedIn… And, they are continuing their impressive growth.
• They have assembled a strong management team including previous executives from JBoss & BEA
• They have developed key partnerships and alliances with Global Systems Integrators and solution providers
• CloudFoundry – This is a new offering from SpringSource. It is a Spring-based Cloud solution development & deployment framework optimized for AWS (it leverages CloudTools).

Why would VMWare buy SpringSource?

SpringSource brings proven & popular technologies to VMWare that don’t overlap with their existing portfolio. It fills its technology gaps above the infrastructure & OS layers. It enables VMWare to reach new customers.

VMWare is a leader in the infrastructure virtualization space. They engage infrastructure architects and sell to data center managers. They sell from bottom up or at the C-level (i.e. cost reduction, simplification).

VMWare doesn’t speak middleware & application frameworks. Similarly, most middleware architects don’t get virtualization. First, SpringSource should be able to raise awareness about virtualization with their existing customer base (middleware architects & developers). This should open up new opportunities for VMWare fairly quickly… Next, VMWare should be able to bring SpringSource in front of their customers. That will also create new opportunities for both companies.

With CloudFoundry, VMWare is able to offer a choice to customers (private or public). By entering the market early, and early engagements with customers on both VSphere & CloudFoundry, VMWare gets a head start understanding the market requirements which enables them to plan and design more competitive Cloud solutions. That is a big advantage.

What about Red Hat?

Red Hat’s approach is different from VMWare. Their strategy is to provide an open-source virtualization solution based on Linux, and provide a unified management framework to address not just virtual infrastructure, but virtual desktops as well.

One of the advantages for Red Hat is that Linux is the most widely deployed OS in the enterprise. This is powered by their big alliance and partnership programs with mega vendors like IBM & HP. This is in balance with VMWare’s partnership program & distribution model (i.e. embedded hypervisor). However, Red Hat’s challenge remains to generalize its efforts and solutions for all Linux distributions.

Final thoughts

I think this is a market defining acquisition. It gives other Cloud Computing vendors some direction to follow. As we move forward, I think the following trends will get stronger:

• More lightweight middleware solutions in the Cloud from open source & mega vendors (i.e. IBM, Oracle)
• More systems management tools in the Cloud from both open source & commercial
• More middleware & systems management appliances

A recurring question for me is what AWS’s strategy is (or should be) with regards to growth? Should they remain an infrastructure provider and incrementally build out more services (organic growth)? Should they continue to rely on partners for value-add services and distribution channel? Is it time for AWS to consider acquisition for growth? What would you do, if you were running AWS?