VMworld: Maritz Outlines VMware's Cloud Future
For more on cloud computing and the enterprise, visit Internet.com's new cloud computing site.
![]() |
"If you want [a hypervisor] for free, we have one," he said dismissively today at his company's VMworld 2010 conference in San Francisco. It was something of a shot at rival Microsoft, which pegged its early efforts at making headway in the virtualization market on giving away its own Hyper-V hypervisor.
But the comment also signals VMware's commitment to its new direction: away from the nuts and bolts of virtualization technology and into enabling a grander goal, what Maritz and company describe as "IT as a service."
SAN FRANCISCO -- VMware CEO Paul Maritz had a clear message for anyone confused about what his company does. "We long ceased being a hypervisor company. If you want one for free, we have one. We make our money on data center automation," Maritz said during a press Q&A following his keynote here at the company's VMworld conference.
That broader vision of the role of virtualization in the enterprise and what VMware (NYSE: VMW) called IT as a Service, was a key theme addressed by Maritz and other VMware executives during the keynote session that also included several related new product announcements and an R&D effort called Project Horizon.