VMWare: the next big Open Source company?

With the acquisition of Zimbra VMWare has very clearly signaled that it is no longer satisfied to lead the (soon to be commoditized) virtualization infrastructure market, and that it intends to move "up the stack".

Zimbra always seemed like awkward pairing with Yahoo! and I have long wondered who might be a better parent company for them. Sun being the new poster child for Open Source seemed like a potential suitor until they got bought out by Oracle. Red Hat's name is synonymous with Open Source, but their laser-like focus on infrastructure has ruled out many potential acquisitions. VMWare never even crossed my mind, but now that I think about it, this might just be the beginning...

VMWare is clearly interested in making a name for itself outside of virtualization, and what better way to do that than to a acquire a bunch of disruptive, high potential Open Source companies? They already acquired SpringSource (Web/Java application framework/platform) and by extension Hyperic (infrastructure management and monitoring) back in 2009, but compared to those two Zimbra is a much more daring step away from their traditional stomping ground.

So with a new path laid out ahead of them, who else might they acquire? Here are some ideas:

Jive Software - Not strictly an Open Source company but it has strong ties to the community. Jive's main product, Jive SBS is an enterprise collaboration tool used to power internal and external communities (forums, blogs, document sharing, enterprise social networking) for some of the biggest names out there including Nike, Intel and VMWare. Think Sharepoint, but built from the ground up with end-users in mind.

One of Jive's other big products Openfire is an Open Source XMPP based IM/Chat Server that is used by many other products including Zimbra and SBS.

SipXecs - SipX is an Open Source enterprise PBX system that has long lived in the shadow of its (technically inferior, but more feature packed) cousin Asterisk. SipX has come a long way in recent times and its upcoming 4.2 release promises some very interesting features including the ability to use an IMAP server (like say Zimbra) as the primary store for voicemail and specialized integration with Openfire and DimDim. Alas SipX is owned by the not so recently bankrupt Nortel Networks and is future seems uncertain (is Avaya getting them?). It would be great to see them snapped up by a Financially strong, open source friendly company.

DimDim - DimDim's web conferencing software is powered by a number of different Open Source components. While the company seems to periodically (once a year or so) toss code over the wall, I wouldn't go as far as calling them open source (there is no community to speak off). Nevertheless they have developed a very interesting and disruptive piece of software and it would be nice to see additional development resources and a stronger community around the product.

Zimbra, Jive (SBS and Openfire), SipX, and DimDim are all good products on their own, but together they would form a powerful and flexible Unified Communication and Collaboration platform that could rival and even outpace similar offerings from Microsoft and IBM. I have often wondered if any company would have the vision and resources to pull all the pieces together. At one point I hoped it might be Sun or Red Hat; now it is looking more and more like VMWare might be that company.

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jOra, an excellent Oracle Development plugin for Eclipse

My new job has me spending more and more time working with Oracle and PL/SQL. Up until recently, I had been getting by with the functionality provided by the Eclipse Data Tools Platform, but I have been having issues using it more recently.

The other day I came across jOra, an Oracle specific database browser/editor plugin for Eclipse. It is much more powerful and flexible than the datatools plugin. Unlike datatools, it supports using synonyms for code completion; this is very useful if you need to work with a lot of objects that don't belong to your schema (assuming they have synonyms). Another nice feature is that it lets you bookmark frequently used table/views/procedures so that you can quickly get to them without digging through the schema.

If you use Eclipse and need to work with Oracle and PL/SQL you should check it out. Read more!

Why I don't want IBM to buy Sun

The grapevine is abuzz with rumors that IBM is offering to acquire Sun for about $6.5 billion. Want to know my opinion? I don't like it one bit. While IBM benefits by having a bigger piece of the server market, the two companies have a lot of overlapping areas and they can't all get priority. AIX or Solaris? Websphere or Glassfish? Eclipse or Netbeans? Power or Sparc? But those clashes aren't the real issues as far as I am concerned. The real issue is that if IBM acquires Sun, innovation will be stifled.

Stifling Innovation

When I say that innovation will be stifled, I am not talking about technical innovation fallout as a result of a culture clash. While there will no doubt be some issues when IBM's east coast, button down, all-business approach meets Sun's west coast, pony-tail wearing, engineer-centric style, that is not the point I am trying to address. The area of innovation I am worried about is that of Sun's open source business strategy.

IBM is not an "open source company"

No one can deny that IBM is a friend to open source. Their backing of Linux has been monumentally beneficial; but when all is said and done, IBM is a proprietary software company. Their software integrates with open source and builds upon open source, but in general it isn't open source. IBM's software strategy is actually more similar to Oracle's than it is to Sun's.

Let the Sun shine

The software world is still experimenting and trying to find the best way to make money with open source. Sun has the potential to lead the charge in a way that Red Hat can't. Sun's CEO has outlined a clear strategic vision for how Sun will make money with open source software:

1. Software: Selling support and services to those that find free to be a more expensive alternative than commercially supported
2. Hardware: Disrupting the proprietary Storage and Networking markets by selling compelling, integrated appliances based on general purpose hardware and open source software.
3. The Network is the computer: Relaunching network.com as cloud computing platform that is:
   • Open: Creative Commons licensed, community reviewed APIs.
   • Enterprise-friendly: lets you create interoperable private clouds in your datacenter based on technology acquired from Q-layer.
   • Developer friendly: integrates with Virtualbox & Netbeans, runs MySQL & Glassfish.

I think this is a winning strategy and I would love to see it work, but I fear it may not survive the take over. Sun's strategy relies very heavily on the fact they have "burned the boats" that carried them away from proprietary software and marched forth into a brave new world of open source. The arrival of IBMs fleet would make all too easy for them return to old, comfortable, proprietary ways.

They say that necessity is the mother of all inventions, looking at Sun's stock price they need to show the world that they have (or can hire) the ability to execute. The recession presents an opportunity for them as CIOs are forced to reevaluate their existing software contracts. Sun has already trimmed down its work-force to make sure that they themselves can survive in the medium term. The only question is whether or not shareholders are patient enough to wait for the results.

Perhaps another suitor

I am not opposed to somebody acquiring Sun, as long as the acquisition doesn't change the current strategy. I have heard Fujitsu mentioned as an possibility; I can't claim to know much about them but Sun and Fujitsu seem to collaborate at a number of levels ranging from sales and support to processor/server design. In Jamaica, Fujitsu is the principal authorized reseller of Sun Servers.

Yahoo! off the table

In spite of the fact that I have been rooting for the merger, I don't see a Yahoo!/Sun deal happening any time soon. Now that IBM has stepped up to the plate, investors would surely scoff at an offer from the wounded internet giant. If Sun and Yahoo! can get their acts together independently I would still like to see at least some kind of collaboration down the line. Sun has stepped up to the plate and made its Infrastructure-as-a-service plans clear. Yahoo! just needs to focus on creating its Software-as-a-Service (starting with Zimbra) and Platform-as-a-Service (built around PHP/MySQL and Hadoop) offerings.

I hope to blog some more about Zimbra and some potential companion products soon. The world needs an open source challenger to go up against Microsoft, Cisco and IBM in the Unified Communications and Collaboration market.

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Sun takes aim at Cisco, moves toward converged datacenter

Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz has a interesting series of blog posts outlining Sun's major strategic imperatives. In his latest post Schwartz announces (in a casual, offhand manner) that Sun plans to compete directly with Cisco by selling Solaris based routers and networking gear built on general purpose hardware:

"...general purpose microprocessors and operating systems are now fast enough to eliminate the need for special purpose devices. That means you can build a router out of a server - notice you cannot build a server out of a router, try as hard as you like...

...we now build our entire line of storage systems from general purpose server parts, including Solaris and ZFS, our open source file system ... We are planning a similar line of networking platforms, based around the silicon and software you can already find in our portfolio."

Cisco takes aim at Sun
That line about not being able to "build a server out of a router" is probably aimed at California, a highly anticipated project that will see Cisco enter the server market (kinda) by delivering a unified Blade Server/Networking/Virtualization/Storage product in concert with partners like VMWare. Project California is expected to launch on March 16.

It seems like both Cisco and Sun have their minds set on the same thing, owning the datacenter. Sun intends to disrupt the proprietary storage and networking markets using a converged, Solaris based systems approach.

Image courtesy of Sun

Solaris as a networking platform

The idea of running open source networking software on commodity hardware isn't exactly new. Vyatta, whose line of networking products are based on Linux, just released version 5 of their platform this week. However Sun has its own set of tools, and as usual, it thinks they are superior. Crossbow is one of the key underlying technologies that makes Solaris a networking platform. Sun hopes that Crossbow can do for networking what ZFS did for storage. Like ZFS, Crossbow has been under development at Sun for many years. It was deemed mature enough to be merged into OpenSolaris in December of last year.

It is important to note that Sun will not be delivering some loosely coupled set of hardware and open source tools for sysadmins to mix and match. Looking it their current "Open Storage" product line, it is clear that they plan to build tightly integrated purpose specific appliances.

Nevertheless, the underlying components will be commodity servers and open source tools. This means that a tech savvy start-up can take these tools and use them to build their own commercial solutions. This is good for Sun in two ways: (1) It drives their technology into the lower end of the market and creates a migration path to the high-end (2) Sun can focus on selling to its target market while entrepreneurs try out new ideas. If an idea looks promising, Sun can acquire the start-up. The acquisition process is made much smoother by the fact that the company is already using Sun technologies.

Using network.com to eat their own dogfood

Even before the first customer signs up, we can expect Sun to use their own datacenters as the proving ground these technologies. I expect that the relaunched of network.com, Sun's born-again cloud computing initiative, will be the first showcase we see. Interestingly enough it is also scheduled to launch on March 16...sorry, it is actually supposed to launch on March 18.

So who will win?

I think Sun's vision is correct, the datacenter is ripe for convergence and commoditization. I think Sun's potential is great, they have the hardware, the software and the engineers. I think the recession works in their favor, companies now have to seriously reevaluate costs and make sure they are getting value for money.

Unfortunately there are two major issues Sun has to get past. (1) Financially speaking, they are not in the best shape right now, and this strategy is more of a marathon than a sprint. Will investors be patient enough to see the finish line? (2) Sun has a history of having great vision, but failing to execute (*cough* original network.com *cough*). Unfortunately for Sun, Cisco's balance sheet and their ability to execute are two of their greatest strengths.

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Intel's Xeon "Nehalem" Processor. The Empire Strikes Back.

Intel is set to officially launch their new line of Xeon processors this month. This release is the latest "tock" in Intel's tick-tock development model, and is based on a new microarchitecture code-named Nehalem. Intel has been following the tick-tock model (refine existing architecture one year/create new architecture the next year) for the last few years so technically this release shouldn't be big news, but based on all the buzz being generated, it looks like this going to be a really loud tock. Both Sun and RedHat have specifically mention Nehalem support in their latest release: OpenSolaris 2008.11 and RHEL 5.3. Citrix and VMware have also voiced support.

Image courtesy of Apple

Intel vs AMD

Since the launch of AMD's Opteron line in 2003, Intel has struggled to regain performance leadership in the server CPU market. The two have fought back and forth feverishly, and while Intel has still managed to (controversially) dominate in terms of market share and profitability, the performance question has been a topic of much debate. With the launch of the Nehalem microarchitecture Intel is seeking to definitively reclaim its crown.

Features

To the careful observer many the Nehalem's "new" features don't seem very new at all. Most of them are features that AMD implemented several years ago.

Multi-core, Single die - The Nehalem Xeons will sport 4 (Xeon EP) or 8 (Xeon EX) cores, all on a single die. Previous quad-core Xeon processors had two pair of cores on separate dies, which meant that some cached data had to travel outside the processor to get from core to core. The new architecture is more efficient. AMD has being using this approach all along.

Integrated Memory Controller - Rather than connecting system memory to a processor through a separate I/O controller, the Nehalem features an integrated memory controller. This means faster access to data stored in memory, and significantly reduced latency. This was one of the AMD's major features when it launched the Opteron...six years ago.

QuickPath Interconnect - In multiprocessor configurations, QuickPath acts as a high-speed interconnect between processors (and each processors memory bank). With the introduction of QuickPath, Xeons can now take advantage of Non-Uniform Memory Access which allows them to scale better as the number of processors increases. QuickPath also acts as the transport for connecting the processors to the motheboard's Southtbridge or IO Hub. AMD calls this HyperTransport.

Hyper-threading - Now here is something they didn't copy from AMD; nevertheless it isn't exactly new either. Hyper-threading allows two threads to run simultaneously on each core. So an 4-core Xeon-EP presents 8 virtual cores to an operating system. This is an Intel technology that made its debut with the Pentium 4, but was since shelved. Looks like it is back and performing better than ever.

Virtulaization - The Nehalem introduces two important virtualization features, Extended Page Tables, which significanlty reduces the overhead involved in virtualizing memory access. (AMD calls this nested page tables and has support in its newer processors) and VT-d, which allows virtual machines to be given direct access to physical devices ( AMD calls this IOMMU and expects to have support by 2H 2009). Technically this is actually a motherboard chipset feature.

The Numbers

Now that Intel and AMD seem to be reaching feature parity in terms of their overall chip architectures we will probably see even more fierce competition. But if Intel is basically just playing catch up to AMD in terms of architecture, what is the big deal? In one word, performance.

While Nehalem desktop chip (Core i7) performance improvements are in the 15-20% range, on the server it is whole different story. This HP/SAP benchmark shows the Xeon Nehalem beating its predecessor by about 100%.

Here is what Red Hat had to say:

"In internal testing, the Red Hat Engineering Performance Group has measured exceptional gains with the new Nehalem processors, with unaudited results showing gains of 1.7x for commercial applications and gains up to 3.5x for high-performance technical computing applications compared to the previous generation of Intel processors."

Apple got the jump on the big server vendors and announced on Tuesday that it is shipping Nehalem Xeons in the Mac Pro workstation line. Here are their numbers:

"The result is fast access to cache data and greater application performance. Combine that with the other technological advances and you get a Mac Pro that’s up to 1.9x faster than the previous generation."

"The integrated memory controller, along with fast 1066MHz DDR3 ECC SDRAM, also gives Mac Pro up to a 2.4x increase in memory bandwidth over previous generations."

AMD should benefit for some of the software optimization being made for the Nehalem, but come the end of March it looks like Intel will have a clear all-around lead for the first time in a long time.

The Empire has struck back, and it only has one question for AMD. Who's your daddy now?

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Red Hat responds, announces its virtualization roadmap

Not wanting to be left out of the party, Red Hat has finally laid their cards on the table by announcing their virtualization strategy. Their plan will be rolled out in stages over the next 18 months, with the first product being released 3 months from now. While this announcement doesn't have nearly as much direct impact as Citrix releasing XenServer for free, it does a pretty good job of showing us what is in store from the world's biggest Linux vendor.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux: Xen out, KVM in

Red Hat will be basing all future virtualization technologies on KVM instead of Xen, starting with the release of RHEL 5.4 later this year. This move has been in the making since Red Hat bought Qumranet (the orignal KVM devlopers) in September of last year. While there were initially a lot of questions about the value of this change (Xen had a headstart on KVM), Red Hat maintains that KVM will provide them with a better overall growth trajectory than Xen could have.

With Xen, VMWare ESX and Microsoft's Hyper-V, the hypervisor (the core virtulaization layer) is a independent piece of software that sits directly on top of the physical hardware. A completely separate, privileged operating system, Dom0 (Linux) for Xen, Service Console (Linux) for VMWare, or the Parent Parttiion (Windows) for Hyper-V, sits on top of the hypervisor and performs additional management functions.

Image courtesy of How-To Geek

With KVM the Linux kernel itself is the hypervisor, this means that any advances made in Linux in terms of performance, scalability, power management and security automatically become available to the hypervisor. Other solutions (including Xen) have to maintain their hypervisors independently without the direct benefit of the innovation happening around Linux.

Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Hypervisor and Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Manager for Servers:

RHEV Hypervisor is a lightweight standalone hypervisor designed to be installed directly on physical hardware. It weighs in at less than 128MB and can be run directly from a flash device or via Netboot. One of the key differentiators that Red Hat is pushing with this product is its stateless nature. By default after a node starts up (e.g. via net-boot) it automatically connects to the management server to pull configuration information and waits for further instructions. There no information stored on disk and everything is centrally managed. This provides a lot of management scalability for moving from 10 servers or 10,000.

RHEV Manager for Servers is a web-based virtual machine management platform that manages the RHEV Hypervisor nodes. The combined solution will come with features like live migration, high availability, power management, snapshots, thin provisioning, monitoring and reporting. It is built on existing Red Hat technologies like libvirt (VM Management toolkit), FreeIPA (user and machine identity management), OpenAIS/Cluster (high availibility), AMQP (messaging) and Cobbler (provisioning).

Both products will be derived from the open source oVirt project which was announced last June. oVirt is to RHEV as Fedora is to RHEL. I have been following the project for a while and though development has progressed rapidly it seems like a lot of changes are still happening. While the oVirt project will probably reach 1.0 within the next 3 months, I am not sure that they will have an enterprise product ready by then.

Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Manager for Desktops

Last but certainly not least Red Hat has announced its Linux desktop strategy. Red Hat has long shied away from trying to market a traditional Linux desktop product and has instead focused its effort on selling servers. While it has contributed to desktop innovation through the Fedora Project, it has left the consumer desktop niche to Ubuntu.

It seems that Red Hat has finally found its desktop calling by way of the server-centric Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) model. With VDI the software, storage and computing resources associated with an individual's desktop are hosted on a centrally managed server. Users connect to their desktop using thin clients (or older PCs) but still enjoy a full fledged desktop experience (in theory anyway). This model presents numerous benefits in terms of flexibility, security, managment and IT support.

The VDI market has a lot of familiar players: VMWare View, Citrix XenDesktop, and Sun VDI are just a few. Red Hat's open source entry will be based on technology it acquired when it bought Qumranet. Under Qumranet the product was called Solid ICE:

Image courtesy of Qumranet

Solid ICE was not open source. Red Hat has committed to open sourcing it, but the process could take a while. It will be very interesting to see what happens with the SPICE protocol. It is supposedly superior to RDP and ICA when it comes to providing a high quality desktop experience. If Red Hat opens it up and removes any patents surrounding it, there could be some serious disruption in the thin client market.

Linux on the Desktop

VDI solutions (including Solid ICE) are primary built for deploying Windows based desktops, however once Red Hat gets their foot in the door with VDI, the process for transitioning to a Linux based desktop is made much easier. Rolling out and supporting VDI based desktops is significantly cheaper, which makes the migration process simpler. VDI also makes it easier to support a mixed desktop environment.

Presentation Virtualization

Overall Red Hat's strategy is very sound (if a little late). However I think that there is one key component missing. In my opinion, using presentation virtualization (aka Server-side Application Virtualization) to deliver Windows based apps to a Linux desktop is Red Hat's best strategy for seeing any serious uptake on the corporate desktop, even with VDI in the picture; however this is a whole other can of beans so it probably deserves a blog post of its own.

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Citrix slaps VMWare in the face, releases XenServer for free.

In a bold and unexpected move, Citrix today announced that it will be releasing the enterprise version of its virtualization management platform free of cost. This aggressive strike against VMWare, the incumbent 800 lb gorilla in the virtualization space, comes just a day before VMWare's 2009 European Conference.

Over the last 2 years Citrix has been catching up with VMWare in terms of features. VMWare has managed to stave off the XenServer threat by releasing some of its lower end products for free but it seems very unlikely they would be willing to match Citrix's latest move.

XenServer is Citrix's proprietary virtualization platform that is built on top of the open source Xen hypervisor. Previously a cut-down, single server product (XenServer Express) was available for free, but today's announcement means that features like centralized multi-server management, resource pools and live migration will also be free of charge (but not open source). See below for a feature comparison between the free offerings from each company. It is provided by Citrix so it should be taken with a grain of salt:

Citrix Essentials

Releasing XenServer for free is the strategy for getting their foot in the door, Citrix plans to continue to make money by moving up the vaule chain. Their new Essentials for XenServer product provides additional functionality like High Availibility, Dynamic Resource Management, Advanced Storage Management, Workflow, Automation and Provisioning. Establishing XenServer is the main virtualization technology in the datacenter will make it easier for them to push their application virtualization (XenApp) and desktop virtualization (XenDesktop) products as well.

Where are Sun and Red Hat?

So with all this activity going on, where are the open source players? While both vendors have been working on their own virtualization stacks, neither has managed to mount a comparable virtualization offering to date. Today's announcement is likely to have a big effect on them as well, we'll see how they respond.

The Microsoft Deal

Citrix also announced that it will be partnering with Microsoft to sell Essentials for Hyper-V, a product which provides some of the same advanced management functionality to Microsoft's Hyper-V virtualization platform. Citrix and Microsoft have long had this bizarre co-operation/competion model where you are never quite clear on who is benefiting most. Despite the fact that Citrix has worked closely with Microsoft to develop and sell its XenApp product (formerly Citrix Presentation Server), over time Microsoft has added more and more competing features to their core server product, and today Microsoft has a full product suite that competes directly with XenApp. Nevertheless, the two still collaborate around the product. The same thing can be expected to happen with their server virtualization products, but at the end of the day, one thing is for sure, VMWare is the one that will be hurt the most.

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