VMWare, makers of virtualization products such as Fusion for the Macintosh, has published a white paper on its web site condemning Microsoft’s use of digital rights management protetion to block competition in the virtualization marketplace, according to an article over at Macworld News.
Specifically, the paper, which was released Friday to VMWare’s web site, challenges recent policy changes Microsoft has assigned to licensing terms for its Windows XP and Vista operating system, especially where virtual environments are concerned. These changes “restrict customers’ flexibility and freedom to choose virtualization software by limiting who can run their software and how they can run it,” according to VMWare.
The virtualization market has exploded in recent months, especially on the Mac under the revised Intel architecture, VMWare reporting revenues of US$232 million in the fourth quarter of 2006, up 100% from the fourth quarter of 2005. Parallels, a competitor in the Mac virtualization market, has seen incredible growth and become one of the most sought-after software packages for the Mac OS X platform.
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VMWare, makers of virtualization products such as Fusion for the Macintosh, has published a white paper on its web site condemning Microsoft’s use of digital rights management protetion to block competition in the virtualization marketplace, according to an article over at Macworld News.
Specifically, the paper, which was released Friday to VMWare’s web site, challenges recent policy changes Microsoft has assigned to licensing terms for its Windows XP and Vista operating system, especially where virtual environments are concerned. These changes “restrict customers’ flexibility and freedom to choose virtualization software by limiting who can run their software and how they can run it,” according to VMWare.
The virtualization market has exploded in recent months, especially on the Mac under the revised Intel architecture, VMWare reporting revenues of US$232 million in the fourth quarter of 2006, up 100% from the fourth quarter of 2005. Parallels, a competitor in the Mac virtualization market, has seen incredible growth and become one of the most sought-after software packages for the Mac OS X platform.
VMWare used the white paper to argue that Microsoft is pushing its own desktop and server virtualization others, the company now offering these tools for free as well as integrating them into the operating system – a strategy that has proven successful in growing the market share of its media players and web browsers.
The white paper specifically outlined seven instances of anti-competitive behavior such as restrictions of support for virtualized products, restrictions on running virtualized versions of Microsoft operating systems of third-party virtualization software, prohibitions of desktop virtualization and secrecy regarding exact virtualization specifications.
While VMWare isn’t filing any legal action against Microsoft, this could be the opening volley in a new round of spcific criticism against the software giant. Like Steve Jobs’ recent open letter regarding digital rights management in the online marketplaces, the piece invites parties to take sides and express their opinions from there.