Dell to give VMware ESX Server 3i for free?
Not only Dell is going to sell virtualization-ready solutions (hardware + VMware ESX Server 3i) in one click, but it seems that the OEM vendor is going to give ESX Server 3i for free.
As last article of the week The Inquirer reports the words of Martin Niemer, Senior Product Marketing Manager at VMware, which says that Dell will not charge anything for the hypervisor.
If confirmed this decision will have a serious impact on the sales channel.
On one side other OEMs that have a distribution agreement with VMware (HP, IBM, Fujitsu and other) will be almost obliged to do the same to not give Dell any competitive advantage.
On the other side the VMware distributors and resellers will see their chances to sell ESX Server in the SMB market fall down near to zero.
It was expected that over the next few years VMware would lower the price of its hypervisor to compete with Microsoft aggressive strategy (the upcoming Hyper-V will cost $28) but it certainly wasn't expected so early.
Is this the beginning of the free hypervisors era?
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This just means that Hypervisors are getting commoditized and the real magic is in managing the Physica, Virtual and the application layers. The winner will be one who can do all of that from a integrated management stack. At this stage it is not VMWare.
By
AP, at Saturday, March 15, 2008 1:58:00 AM
As long as people pay for VirtualCenter and all additional plugins that will be available over the next couple of months this will not hurt business, it will probably provide vmware with more business.
By
Duncan, at Saturday, March 15, 2008 8:35:00 AM
Is maintenance included is this free 3i? How long and what level? Even then you will still have to purchase a Starter, Standard, or Enterprise license if you want any of the advanced features. All 3i gets you without additional licensing is VMFS and vSMP. Sure the hypervisor is free, but it is vMotion, svMotion, HA, and DRS that I really want and those features are not free. This is much like EMC giving you a free DMX or CX, and then you find out all the software costs associated with getting that DMX or CX to run.
By
Anon, at Saturday, March 15, 2008 7:53:00 PM
I think this is all hype. If it is 'free', then there's a charge somewhere to make up for it.
By
non-believer, at Sunday, March 16, 2008 3:23:00 AM
I'm sure they will make up the money somewhere else. God forbid a business tries to actually make money...
By
user, at Monday, March 17, 2008 4:21:00 PM
It's a non-issue. ESX Server upgrade from 3i is only $100 less at list. This just helps seed the market with more ESX which creates more opportunities for services for integrators.
By
Steve Kaplan, at Friday, April 04, 2008 1:37:00 AM
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