Around the World in Less than 180 Days

When is late early?

This morning, Microsoft announced that its Hyper-V virtualization technology had released to manufacturing. From one perspective, the software shipped late, because it missed the February 27 launch of Windows Server 2008. Looked at another way, the software is early, because the RTM was less than the previously stated "released within 180 days." RTM is more like 120 days, or two months early.

The first rule in any kind of product marketing: Promise one thing and deliver something more. Or as my former JupiterResearch colleague Michael Gartenberg often says, "Under promise and over deliver." I expect there will be many "early" blogs and news stories about Hyper-V today, even though the software is late. Still, Microsoft deserves credit for making up so much development ground so fast. Kudos.

That said, two months early understates just how quickly Microsoft moved out Hyper-V. This morning, I spoke with Mike Neil, general manager of Microsoft Virtualization, about the release timetable. Hyper-V is "available today from Download Center." Microsoft had been indicating August availability just a few months ago.

So it's not August, not third quarter, not second half. Microsoft really released Hyper-V in the first half of the year. That's unusual, given in Microsoft parlance, release almost always means release to manufacturing, with availability some weeks later. "I've been consistent [about] 180 days, and I've always said within," Mike emphasized.

Maybe Microsoft's Server and Tools division had some other pressure—another deadline driving development to reach quality goals early. "It was good to slip this one [in] under the reign of Bill Gates," Mike said. Tomorrow is the Microsoft chairman's last day as a full-time employee.

For those enterprises not wanting to manually download Hyper-V, "on July 8 we will make it available through our Windows Update process," Mike said. The software has already been validated by OEMs for more than 200 systems, he added. Microsoft has expanded the list of supported operating systems, which now includes Windows 2000. See the list.

Windows Server 2008 shipped with the Hyper-V beta, which Mike said most enterprises should be able to easily update manually (through Download Center) or automatically (through Windows Update). The "how easily" should be known shortly, as enterprises begin to deploy the virtualization software.

Hyper-V comes at a time when more enterprises are putting more emphasis on virtualization. According to a recent eWEEK survey of 402 IT decision makers, 32.1 percent of enterprises will have deployed virtual desktop infrastructure by year's end. Meanwhile, 22.3 percent of enterprises will have deployed application virtualization.

Gartner predicts the number of deployed virtual machines will rise from 540,000 at the end of 2006 to more than 4 million in 2009. The major driving force—as in 90 percent of users—is server consolidation.

Many enterprises are consolidating servers in a massive trend not seen in a decade. Sun hugely benefitted from late-1990s server consolidation leading up to the so-called Year 2000 crisis. Mike Neil rightly observed that the TCO concerns drove the last decade's push to consolidate. The reasons are much different today: green computing, as IT organizations seek to reduce energy consumptions and costs related to cooling data centers, regulatory compliance and mobile computing trends, among others.

Pricing is unchanged from earlier announcements. Windows Server 2008 SKUs with Hyper-V cost just $28 more than those without. The price of the additional benefit might not seem much to customers but it could mean more to Microsoft and its partners. Hyper-V inclusion could snatch away potential customers from VMware, among other virtualization developers.

With previous Microsoft virtual server software, businesses had to license two virtualization instances, one for the server partition and another for the applications. Microsoft has modified licensing such that customers pay for only one virtualization instance.

Circling back to this blog's title—headline, if you prefer—and play off the Jules Verne novel, "Around the World in Eighty Days": Server and Tools is rapidly emerging as Microsoft's can-do division. According to a Forrester report published on Friday, "80 percent of firms cite the Redmond software giant as their primary server OS vendor." The division has posted more than 20 consecutive quarters of growth.

At a time when Microsoft's co-founder is stepping aside and CEO Steve Ballmer has sales and marketing executives running the company, it's interesting to see the division with best execution is run by a technical leader—Bob Muglia.

Mike Neil is in the right place, and he knows it—at least for June 26, 2008: "I'm the happiest guy at Microsoft," he said.