Microsoft is ready to ship its Hyper-V virtualization platform to market, there has been a lot of talk around the water cooler as to what this really means for the industry and its current players. As an example, the big question being asked is, “What effect will it have on the current virtualization giant, VMware?”

VMware seems to be using its poker face while Microsoft has its day in the sun. It appears to be acting as though nothing has changed since Microsoft's announcement. Acting as though it isn't fazed one bit by the early release of Hyper-V, VMware is sticking to its guns and labeling the Microsoft hypervisor as a first-generation product that lacks the features and capabilities needed to compare to VMware's current offerings.

From a pure hypervisor standpoint, VMware's ESX product is far more mature. However, in comparing hypervisor features, I believe Microsoft has made great strides in catching up to VMware. One of the big missing components in Hyper-V is the ability to offer live migration, or what VMware calls VMotion. And to be fair, VMware has spent a lot of time and money to extend its hypervisor by expanding its application stack around the product -- an area where I believe the ultimate hypervisor fight is going to end up.

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