What Ballmer and Hurd should announce this afternoon

Virtualise this _|_

Are you on the payroll of some Virtualisation interest group, your massively over hyping the importance on Virtualisation.

Lets hope

its a tablet.

Virtualised tablet?

Maybe it's a virtualised tablet that you run on a normal computer? You could use the mouse to "touch" the screen. That would be pure win!

The Citrix Play?

If HP and Microsoft announce a major virtualization alliance, that could mean the death of Citrix's XenServer division as we know it.

Why?

Why should they be announcing anything to do with virtualisation? Just because you cream your paints at anything mentioning virtualisation? There's loads of things they could be announcing and probably lots of things far more interesting as well.

You're forgetting Hurd is Supertart.

Whilst hp spends a lot of time getting all kissy-kissy with Micro$haft, they also get kissy-kissy with just about everyone else! Hp have long played the role of industry tart, happy to hold hands with just about any software vendor if hp can flog some hardware and services to go with it. You can find hp salegrunts selling IBM software, Citrix, VMware, even saying nice things about Slowaris on ProLiants. The idea that hp may get an exclusive from M$ is possible, they are the leading x64 vendor, but the idea that hp will drop all other forms of x64 virtualisation is unlikely.

As an example, one our resellers showed me some of the Red Hat info on KVM they got at the recent hp Tech Summit. They said it was hard to turn round without falling over a RH staffer.

I'd say VMware is pretty safe in the enterprise from Hyper-V, but Hyper-V will sit very nicely with the SME and even some enterprises simply because it will come under the Windows banner and probably not require the expense of a VMware specialist/admin. I'd be more worried about much cheaper alternatives such as KVM - they don't need to do 100% of what VMware does to appeal to 90% of VMware customers. But then how much traction does RH have in the SME arena? Probably not much, not without Supertart!

Re: Virtualised tablet?

If you want that, download the Android SDK.

Let's hope to god this isn't another stupid touchscreen device or an iPhone killer. Ugh. They make feel like telling all the kids to run along and play while us grown-ups get some real work done.

Hurd?

Man, I was thinking that HP and MS were going to pick up HURD and build a clean OS. Ah, well, one can dream.

Mine's the one with the funny pages in the pocket.

Hyper-V? Nah...

...let's hope Microsoft trash that piece of junk (one of my customers was basically immobilized for over a month after a single, "highly critical" software update for Windows Server 2008 took out the entire virtualized machine workforce that was running under Hyper-V on the server in question. Microsoft support said the problem didn't exist, though there were hundreds of remarkably similar requests for help in the forum... my customer has since moved to XEN; everything works dandy except for some of the Windows VMs having occasional hiccoughs, though no more than physical machines would have).

As for the support of operating systems in a virtual environment, I was recently very pleasantly surprised by VirtualBox, which unlike the other big players will happily run even OS/2 (makes me happy because one of my customers needs it and so far had to rely on a worn-out piece of hardware with signs of an impending mainboard failure).

I do want more virtualisation solutions -- the more there are, the more all providers need to improve their offers. My experiences with Hyper-V (formerly known as VirtualPC, which at least worked), however, have completely turned me off that one.

What Hurd should announce...

...is that he is to perform seppuku, after what he has done to the businesses he is supposedly running, but actually ruining.

But he won't. He'll just cut more staff, and let projects be run into disaster by bullshitting idiots, just as long as his bonus goes up.