The Democrats had their convention, followed by the Republicans. As VMware gets ready for its own convention, Microsoft has rained on their parade by holding its 'Get Virtual Now' Virtualization party one week ahead of VMware's. I am looking at the news headlines this morning and all I see is that every possible Virtualization company, large and small, is rushing to declare its tools are either ready or will be ready very soon to play in Microsoft's Virtualization Olympics.

This week I declare the end of VMware, gloom and doom. History repeats itself on many occasions and this is the movie "Netscape Part Two" for all practical purposes.

VMware, however, saw this coming a long time ago - the day when its stock crashed and the day its CEO was replaced by a Microsoft warrior. Too little, too late.

If I were in the board room at VMware, my first item on the agenda to discuss would be to finish up the project of acquiring Red Hat, and during the opening night of VMware World, announce it to the world. This would work very nicely for both VMware and Red Hat.