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VMware Gets All Free & Easy: Page 3 of 3

VMware, of course, can easily cope with this show of largesse, particularly given that the vendor has more than 20 (revenue-generating) products that sit on top of ESXi.

It has already been suggested that VMware’s next move should be to add more features to the free ESXi or drop the pricing for the likes of Virtual Infrastructure, although Gilmartin would not offer up any hostages to fortune when he spoke to us today.

”We will be vigilant [to customer needs and market conditions],” he said, coyly. “But right now we feel confident that the pricing that we have for our Virtual Infrastructure suite provides tremendous value for our customers and provides the types of solution that are not available from anybody else today.”

VMware, which almost single-handedly created the virtualization market as we know it, has hardly been synonymous with free software, although clearly the times are-a-changing. With smaller organizations now looking to exploit virtualization, and an increasingly cut-throat market, we should see much more movement on price from the major vendors over the coming years.Have a comment on this story? Please click "Discuss" below. If you'd like to contact Byte and Switch's editors directly, send us a message.

  • Burton Group
  • Citrix Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CTXS)
  • Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT)
  • VMware Inc.