Microsoft and VMware have indeed been having it out as of late.
recently, where I work, I was on a support call in July ( to India )
with Microsoft and the support person discovered we were running on
VMware and ended the support call. About the same time the contract for
our Enterprise agreement disappeared from our MS web portal and was
replaced with a different one. ( Um, you cant change a contract after
its been signed ). Oh and by the way the reason we were running this
particular app on VMware is because that's the way the Microsoft techs
designed it... and they then denied they had done that. We pursued. We
ended up getting a top MS support person ( in New York ) to help us and
resolve our issue. They were ( eventually ) quite amicable and when we
got the ball rolling the problem was fixed very quickly and to our
complete satisfaction.
Microsoft's stance at the time was that only Enterprise customers could
get support on VMware ( I had called the non-enterprise support number
initially ) and if they perceived that the problem was possibly due to
virtualization, that we would need to reproduce on physical hardware.
I was given a KB number on the policy. We were OK with that, however I
argued that I know a lot of people using VMware at an enterprise level
and that if the MS OS product couldn't be supported that the likely
scenario wasn't to switch to Microsoft's VM product, something that
would in some cases cost millions, but rather to NOT use microsoft OS
when possible. I also argued that a policy doc on the MS website is NOT
the same thing as a EULA or a signed Enterprise contract and held no
legal basis and that we were investigating the contents of those
documents, as well as getting our original signed agreement back.
I figure we are small fish on the global MS scene, but the implications
of those items are scalable to any company, and its SO important that
any company or individual no matter how small should voice their
position. I had a feeling we were not alone in discovering these problems.
Recently while I was visiting Intel at one of their professional things,
someone let fly that MS had changed its policy and that the stance on
VMware had changed. I poked around and indeed the same KB article on MS
position for VMware ( er, 3rd party ) had changed to include support
for all if the product was some sort of Microsoft "partner". It appears
some sort of deal has been struck.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/897615/en-us
http://dcsblog.burtongroup.com/data_center_strategies/2008/08/its-official--.html
http://edge.networkworld.com/news/2008/090308-vmwares-esx-certified-for-microsoft.html
Mark
marbux wrote:
Of interest, from VMWare's latest SEC form 10K, by way of Groklaw News Picks:
"Some of our competitors and potential competitors supply a wide
variety of products to, and have well-established relationships with,
our current and prospective end users. Some of these competitors have
in the past and may in the future take advantage of their existing
relationships to engage in business practices that make our products
less attractive to our end users. For example, Microsoft has
implemented distribution arrangements with x86 system vendors and
independent software vendors, or ISVs, related to certain of their
operating systems that only permit the use of Microsoft's
virtualization format and do not allow the use of our corresponding
format. Microsoft has also implemented pricing policies that require
customers to pay additional license fees based on certain uses of
virtualization technology. These distribution and licensing
restrictions, as well as other business practices that may be adopted
in the future by our competitors, could materially impact our
prospects regardless of the merits of our products."
<http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1124610/000119312508172131/d10q.htm#tx93957_11>.
Best regards,
Paul
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