Vista Virtualization Woes
Microsoft is probably tired at the endless comparisons of Vista to Apple's OS X - normally with Vista being a laughing stock. One way they are fighting back is by punitive Virtualization EULA. Consumer versions of Vista are not allowed to be virtualized "on security grounds" apparently.
This is a clear travesty, specially from a company whose approach to security is notoriously lax. In fact Virtualization can often be used to make the end user environment more secure. For example one can use one virtualized instance to do personnel work etc in complete isolation from another work environment. Then you can run these on a more secure base OS such as OS X or Linux, and in a short while Solaris.
It seems clear to many that Microsoft Vista which is under attack from all sides is using this excuse to hamper switchers to OS X and other OSs by making it illegal for them to have easy access to Vista "when required". It must be pretty galling for Ballmer and Gates to have some many reputed journalists over and over again draw unfavorable comparisons with Apples Tiger and soon leopard versions of OS X.
Despite the recent launch of VirtualPC 7 Microsoft's own virtualization strategy is currently in tatters as it has to give all its virtualization platforms away free and still they have little traction against VMware and others. They pin their hopes on their Veridian Hypervisor but I suspect many enterprises will be sitting on the fence in case ballmer ships a couple of sub standard releases before getting it right - maybe Xen and ESX will have made it irrelevant by then
Meanwhile at Sun work continues on Xen and Solaris and promises the best of both worlds, virtualization on an enterprise operating system. However one thing you won't be able to do is run those low end versions of Vista - at least while Redmond is running scared.
- Ballmer's self-fulfilling prophecy
- Microsoft tells some users no on Vista
- Microsoft swallows the BluePill
This is a clear travesty, specially from a company whose approach to security is notoriously lax. In fact Virtualization can often be used to make the end user environment more secure. For example one can use one virtualized instance to do personnel work etc in complete isolation from another work environment. Then you can run these on a more secure base OS such as OS X or Linux, and in a short while Solaris.
It seems clear to many that Microsoft Vista which is under attack from all sides is using this excuse to hamper switchers to OS X and other OSs by making it illegal for them to have easy access to Vista "when required". It must be pretty galling for Ballmer and Gates to have some many reputed journalists over and over again draw unfavorable comparisons with Apples Tiger and soon leopard versions of OS X.
Despite the recent launch of VirtualPC 7 Microsoft's own virtualization strategy is currently in tatters as it has to give all its virtualization platforms away free and still they have little traction against VMware and others. They pin their hopes on their Veridian Hypervisor but I suspect many enterprises will be sitting on the fence in case ballmer ships a couple of sub standard releases before getting it right - maybe Xen and ESX will have made it irrelevant by then
Meanwhile at Sun work continues on Xen and Solaris and promises the best of both worlds, virtualization on an enterprise operating system. However one thing you won't be able to do is run those low end versions of Vista - at least while Redmond is running scared.
Posted by Ceri Davies on February 25, 2007 at 04:14 AM MST #