by Playfuls Staff |
18th July 2006
Martin Taylor’s surprising departure from Microsoft (he was the former head of anti-Linux department in Redmond) seems to have lead to the “taming of the shrew”.[more]
First there was the Open XML-ODF partnership that Microsoft signed two weeks ago. And now the same Microsoft announces a new deal, this time with XenSource.
According to the declaration given on Monday, Microsoft will provide support for computers which run Linux OS or other operating systems to simultaneously run its future Windows server on them. It seems that this will be made possible through a software bridge built by the two companies between their products.
The partnership announced on Monday is clearly targeted at WMware, the today’s leader in virtualization technology. Both XenSource and WMware are based in Palo-Alto, California, but WMware is a unit of EMC Corp. and helped pioneer the market in which computers can be used to simultaneously run multiple operating systems.
Both virtualization technologies (or virtualization software) are based on the term of a hypervisor-meaning a low-level software that lets multiple operating systems share the same hardware. An operating system must be adapted for Xen to run best on the hypervisor. However, features in new processors from Intel and Advanced Micro Devices let unmodified operating systems, such as Windows, run on Xen. The Microsoft-XenSource collaboration is designed to return the compliment, letting Linux adapted for Xen also run on Microsoft's hypervisor.
"What Microsoft and XenSource are committing to, effectively, is building a bridge" between the two tools, said Jeff Price, a senior director in Microsoft's Windows Server group.
Microsoft and XenSource said in a common statement that they will cooperate on the development of technology that makes their respective "virtualisation" software programs work side-by-side on the same computer.
It's nothing short of heart-warming to see how much VMware bothers Microsoft.
The software giant from Redmond first bought Connectix, believing that Virtual PC and Virtual Server would let it challenge VMware. It didn’t turn out to be as they had expected. So Microsoft this year decided to give away its virtualization products for free and, as mentioned, has gone so far as to embrace Linux in order to keep up with VMware and customers.
The joint efforts between the two companies will deliver the following customer benefits: interoperability by design through collaborative development of two leaders in virtualization technology; a flexible, high-performance and more reliable virtualization solution with Windows Server "Longhorn," optimized to support heterogeneous, software environments and a wide array of hardware; Microsoft technical support for issues regarding interoperability with Xen-enabled Linux guest operating systems through the standard Microsoft technical support process.
"Customers have been very positive about that," Price said. "Customers want to have assurances that they can run Linux in a supportive and high-performance manner. If it is a problem with the Windows hypervisor, we'll fix it," Price added. If it's a Linux or Xen issue, he said, Microsoft will "make sure they get the right Linux support."
For XenSource, the contract signed on Monday opens up the possibility of building software that works with both Windows and Linux hypervisors.
"It really is about providing a much larger market for the products and services that we want to build, (products) that have become possible via the broad adoption of virtualization," said Frank Artale, a vice president at XenSource.
Microsoft said it expects to conduct a public trial of Windows Server virtualization by the end of this year and to release a commercial version of the software within 180 days of the date when Windows Server "Longhorn" is released. Microsoft aims to release "Longhorn" by the end of 2007, it said.
