When VMware rolled out vSphere 4 to great fanfare yesterday morning, the conversation was 98% enterprise and 2% SMBs. But if you look behind that distressingly typical big-company focus, smaller companies are actually finding some real benefits.
Justin Lauer, manager of information technology at Campbell Clinic outside Memphis, Tenn., said VMware "didn't go into it as much as I'd hoped," but found many new vSphere features -- like VMware Data Recovery -- "purpose-built for SMBs."
Ben Tomkins' excellent roundup of the vSphere announcement earlier today clearly lays out the basics, including new packaging options designed for smaller companies.
On stage -- surrounded by employees clad in matching blue T-shirts at VMware's ritzy campus in the hills of Palo Alto, Calif., though -- CEO Paul Maritz teamed with industry heavyweights like Cisco leader John Chambers and Dell CEO Michael Dell to go a bit deeper into the issues.
Fighting Complexity In The Data Center
Basically, Maritz said, data centers represent expensive "pillars of complexity" for companies of all sizes, which is why they're being threatened by cloud computing. Data centers hang on, he said, because they're secure and well understood: "The beast we know and love."
Well, SMBs are even more intimidated by data center complexity and they can't take advantage of many data center economies of scale -- all of which makes cloud computing an even more attractive option for smaller companies.
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VMware is trying to change that with its $999 Always On IT In A Box, which covers up to three servers with two processors each (which generates the $166 per processor price the company is tossing around). According to Maritz, this product dramatically lowers the complexity level for small companies with mini data centers. If something goes wrong, he said, "You don't call for help right way, you just wait for the regular weekly service visit. The software is self-healing and keeps running until the regular maintenance."
Michael Dell focused on the manageability issue: "Spending $1 to acquire infrastructure and then spending $8 to manage it is unacceptable," he said. "Variation kills."
To that end, VMware is working with key cloud providers like Terremark (though not Amazon EC2) to make the network more compatible with company data centers. The idea is to let companies view all resources (internal and in the cloud) as a single "private cloud," and easily move data and applications among various data centers and cloud providers as needed. Maritz also claimed that with vSphere 4's performance improvements, virtually any application can be virtualized.
Good Is Good, But Cheap Is Sometimes Better
For SMBs, of course, the key is often cost. "I want to have the same features enterprises want," said Campbell Clinic's Lauer. "The question is always whether I can afford them. I'd love to use Site Recovery Manager (SRM) but I can't afford it. I can't do the ROI," he said, but added that other SMBs that can't afford downtime might be able to justify it.
Lauer said that many of the features he was most interested in are typically included only in the enterprise editions of vSphere 4, but he expects VMware to offer them as independent upgrades for SMB customers. "I hope to see more specific features built for SMBs."
Just as important for Lauer, vSphere 4 is now at a price point much closer to Microsoft, which will help SMBs get on board with VMware, he said. Some SMBs just want to consolidate their servers, or have room to "spin up a test machine."
Joe Andrews, VMware's SMB group product marketing manager, added that when you compare "high availability" functionality, VMware is now cheaper than Microsoft's virtualization solutions.
Andy Woyzbun, lead analyst at Info-Tech Research, agrees that in the competition between VMware and Microsoft, "a lot of it has to do with pricing." Microsoft's virtualization offerings have been cheap enough to convince smaller companies to start using virtualization, Woyzbun said, but VMware's new packages will help keep existing customers on board. "But what about the great unwashed" who haven't yet committed to virtualization?
The question remains how much virtualization they'll be willing to pay for. Will they pony up a little more for increased functionality, no matter how valuable, or will they try to get by spending as little as possible?
The answer to that question is likely to determine the future of virtualization among smaller companies.
See more columns by Fredric Paul.
Fredric Paul is publisher/editor-in-chief of bMighty.com and SmallBizResource.com.
