VMware fires back at Microsoft's trash talk

Breaks silence on virtualisation baiting.

VMware, which for years has ignored Microsoft's persistent trash talking about its virtualisation products, is finally fighting back.

VMware's Get The Facts website launched Monday with the stated mission of counteracting "Microsoft hyperbole," featuring rebuttals to several of Microsoft's oft-voiced criticisms.

"When it comes to virtualisation and cloud infrastructure, VMware’s competitors are playing catch-up, often making bold unsubstantiated claims," VMware says on the website. "Check out the facts for yourself and learn how Microsoft’s marketing fluff falls short of reality."

In addition to touting its Live Migration as five times faster than Microsoft's, VMware kicks sand at the software giant's latest server virtualisation update.

"Hyper-V R3 will still fall short of vSphere 5 in critical areas like virtual security, storage management and business continuity," the website claims.

One of Microsoft's favorite arguments is that its System Centre server management platform can handle VMware hypervisors, while VMware does not have a corresponding capability.

In VMware's view, System Centre lacks the ability to manage vSphere hosts, clusters or resource pools and also falls short when it comes to provisioning storage and networking.

"System Center Virtual Machine Manager requires vCentre Server to manage vSphere environments, resulting in redundant cost and more complex processes," according to the VMware website.

VMware began fighting back in earnest last month when it cited test results from research firm Principled Technologies, which showed that the combination of vSphere and vCentre Site Recovery Manager is actually cheaper to operate than Hyper-V and System Centre, in terms of the time admins must spend to keep it up and running.

Microsoft, meanwhile, has been trying to chip away at VMware's server virtualisation dominance through creative marketing.

The software giant’s heavily produced "VM-Limited" campaign, which features the anachronistic 1970s character Tad, is meant to highlight VMware’s inability to move beyond its roots in virtualisation and into cloud infrastructure.

VMware sticks to high road

Microsoft enjoys injecting humor into its VMware bashing, but turnabout is fair play. In a blog post earlier this week, VMware quoted American Statesman Benjamin Franklin's saying "one today is worth two tomorrows" in reference to Microsoft's tendency to talk about products and features well in advance of their launch.

Windows Server 2012 with Hyper-V, and a release of System Centre 2012 that will support all its new features, are not yet available.

"Amid all of the talk of Windows Server 2012 and the coming release of Hyper-V, it can get awfully confusing about what is actually here today and what is coming in the future," VMware says in the blog post.

Microsoft and VMware have a symbiotic relationship, but two companies' rivalry is intensifying as each vies to become the dominant software player in the cloud.

VMware was at Microsoft's TechEd conference this week, bu reports have emerged Microsoft is not permitting it to attend its Worldwide Partner Conference next month.

Microsoft is also banning Google, Salesforce and Oracle.

This article originally appeared at crn.com