In April 2005 VMware delivered a presentation at Perforce User Conference to describe how software development was working and which problems company had at that time. The presentation, suddenly emerged from the Net, is now unveiling a lot of interesting informations about virtualization leader software lifecycle model.
In particular:
- every major release (e.g.: Workstation 6.0) was set for delivery every 18 months
- every minor release (e.g.: ESX Server 3.1) was set for delivery every 9 months
- every cumulative bugfixes release (e.g.: VirtualCenter 2.0.1) was set for delivery every 3 months
But the most interesting information is that VMware has 40% of code shared among major products, which at that time were: ESX Server, Virtual Center, GSX Server (now Server), Workstation and ACE.
The presentation also shows how VMware branching model works:
The virtualization.info Virtualization Industry Roadmap helps recognize how VMware is not respecting such delivery schedule anymore for all kind of releases:
- Workstation 5.0.0 (04/2005) –> 6.0.0 (04/2007)
- ESX Server 3.0.0 (06/2006) –> 3.1.0 (expected 3/2007)
- ESX Server 3.0.0 (06/2006) –> 3.0.1 (10/2006) –> 3.0.2 (expected 01/2007)
Despite that VMware may stick with 18 months timeframe for enterprise product, releasing ESX Server 4.0 next summer, as expected to counter-attack release of Microsoft Windows Server Virtualization (codename Viridian):
- ESX Server 2.0.0 (12/2004) –> 3.0.0 (06/2006) –> 4.0.0 (06/2008)
Read the whole presentation at source.