Microsoft’s Hyper-V 3.0 ambitions: Temper the enthusiasm

Recently, Microsoft indicated that, with Hyper-V 3.0, Hyper-V will be on par with and even “leapfrog” VMware in some areas. While I have no doubts that, in some ways, Microsoft will pull no punches with Hyper-V 3.0 and Hyper-V 3.0 will prove to be the perfect solution for many companies, I will admit that I cringe a bit when I read things like that. To be clear, I’m a huge fan of Microsoft software but virtualization – at present – is the one area I don’t use Microsoft for. I seriously hope that Hyper-V 3.0 proves to be a huge hit and can add a bit more competition to the hypervisor space and force VMware to be a little less, well, arrogant. Right now, VMware has become the Cisco of the hypervisor space: Big and arrogant. Fortunately, however, there are very credible competitors to Cisco and I believe that Microsoft will be a more serious competitor with the next release but to say that they will leapfrog the competition after spending so many years behind the curve concerns me. I’d hate to see the company release a product that doesn’t quite live up to the hype and lose as a result.