Oracle Joins the VMware Fight, Sort Of (VMW, ORCL, RHT, QSFT)

Oracle Corp (NASDAQ:ORCL) made its "virtualization push" public yesterday at its Oracle OpenWorld, which is seeing some mixed reaction on the day after.  The enterprise software giant has not had a public or formal answer to VMWare Inc.’s (NYSE:VMW) virtualization lead.  Oracle’s product is three times more efficient than competitors’ offerings, at least according to the company itself.  The pricing also looks different.  Customers can download "Oracle VM" for free, and the enterprise software giant will sell service contracts ranging from $499 to $999 per year.

VMware shares were hit another 8% yesterday, while Oracle shares rose almost 3%. Apparently Jefferies believes the sell-off in VMware was too much.  Thomas Weisel noted that Oracle VM roughly compares to Red Hat (NYSE:RHT) Enterprise Linux 5.0.

Just this morning, VMware unveiled VMware Server 2, its (already) next generation of the company’s free-of-charge virtualization product, which enables organizations to quickly provision new server capacity by partitioning a physical server into multiple virtual machines.  VMware Server 2 beta for Linux and Windows hosts is available for immediate download, while VMware Server 2 is expected to be generally available next year. Enterprise-class support from VMware is expected to be available for VMware Server 2 at the time of general availability.

As more and more companies enter the virtualization space with announcements, whether the virtualization products are great or not, it is hard not to take heed of Virtual Iron’s CEO comments from our exclusive interviews over the last week: "Anyone can run multiple O/S’s on a server now, but that alone won’t cut it ahead."

Quest Software (NASDAQ:QSFT) made its own announcement yesterday with its acquisition of privately held Provision Networks Inc.

The VMware Conundrum still exists.  You can expect more ‘virtualization’ announcements today from various players.  There is the "Virtualization Conference & Expo West" from yesterday and today, and UBS is hosting its "Global Technology & Services Conferences" today through Thursday.

Jon C. Ogg
November 13, 2007