Industry News Desk
VMware Makes its Hypervisor Free
VMware Made Good On its Promise to Cut the Price of its Standalone ESXi Hypervisor to Free
Jul. 30, 2008 12:00 PM
Attempting to put space between itself and Microsoft – and
as a talisman against a weakening economy – VMware made good on its promise to
cut the price of its standalone ESXi hypervisor to free.
The ESXi 3.5 update 2 widgetry, which the company describes
as having the ease of use and “battle-tested” maturity and stability to stand
up to mass distribution can now be downloaded at http://www.vmware.com/products/esxi/.
It’s positioning the thing as “really just a foundation,”
and says “the business model and real value in virtualization is evolving
toward a virtualized infrastructure and the management and automation tools
leveraging the hypervisor.”
It wants to sell VMware Infrastructure 3 on top of ESXi and
points out that some 800 virtual appliances have been created for it, with ESXi
now incorporating direct integration with the VMware Virtual Appliance
Marketplace so users can immediately download and run virtual appliances.
About Maureen O'GaraMaureen O'Gara the most read technology reporter for the past 20 years, is the Cloud Computing and Virtualization News Desk editor of SYS-CON Media. She is the publisher of famous "Billygrams" and the editor-in-chief of "Client/Server News" for more than a decade. One of the most respected technology reporters in the business, Maureen can be reached by email at maureen(at)sys-con.com or paperboy(at)g2news.com, and by phone at 516 759-7025. Twitter: @MaureenOGara