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Pilgrim in a Strange Land
- Thread starter NetJunkie
- Start date
Child of Wonder
2[H]4U
- Joined
- May 22, 2006
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- 3,270
Funny. I raised my hand too late otherwise I'd be there, too.
At some point we have to embrace some of these other technologies. In an ideal world, VMware would be it, but unfortunately, it's just not in the cards and lets face it, competition is a good thing.
We looked at Microsoft, (for Virtualization) because we are seeing more and more customers going that route, especially in schools where licensing is dirt cheap. We brought them in and they gave us a briefing etc, and in the end, my concerns were not around the technology as I think it's there, for the most part, it was more about Partner Enablement and the relationships. After that briefing, we all came to the same conclusion, VMware has the best Ecosystem, Social, and Community than any of them, period. MS is sorely lacking there.
We looked at Microsoft, (for Virtualization) because we are seeing more and more customers going that route, especially in schools where licensing is dirt cheap. We brought them in and they gave us a briefing etc, and in the end, my concerns were not around the technology as I think it's there, for the most part, it was more about Partner Enablement and the relationships. After that briefing, we all came to the same conclusion, VMware has the best Ecosystem, Social, and Community than any of them, period. MS is sorely lacking there.
Treyshadow
[H]ard|Gawd
- Joined
- Sep 7, 2003
- Messages
- 1,392
Yes, yes they do. Now my mind is wondering who / what group will be the first to drink from the trough of Microsoft enlightenment.
Higher Education is nearly constantly evaluating whether VMware is still a good choice because MS' licensing is quite literally peanuts compared to VMware licensing. There are a number of campuses who have abandoned VMware in favor of MS virtualization.
If you think about it, you are already running an MS shop with AD, SCCM, and lots of Powershell. It's not too much of a stretch to take that institutional knowledge and add Hyper-V and SCVMM and be done with it at 1 - 5 % of the cost of VMware licensing.
Earlier this year our campus decided to stick with VMware for another year, but each year the technology gap for our environment closes and VMware remains doesn't adjust their pricing even when negotiating a State contract (nevermind that the VAR who used to hold the State contract appears to have been completely blindsighted by VMware negotiating directly and at least to an outsider it looks like an attempt to cut VARs out of State contracts (which is OK I suppose)). The VMware party line is that we are stuck with it because the cost of switching to different technology is far greater than just paying up year after year.
IMHO VMware doesn't get the EDU market at all. Commercial TCO/ROI doesn't apply in EDU. The time of the people who work in EDU is worthless when it comes to changing technology. The only cost that is considered is what you save in annual licensing fees. It doesn't matter if it takes 2,000 hours to make the switch because people are paid to be at work regardless of what they do.
I am reasonably certain that our campus will abandon VMware a year from now, and that the State will do the same a year from when the campus does. I don't think that VMware will change its licensing tune to bring it in line with MS licensing for EDU.
When the campus goes Hyper-V I will take our servers Hyper-V as well because I need to be in line with what the campus does for business continuity reasons. There will be more whitepapers from EDU customers who switched to Hyper-V, and the whole thing will snowball into VMware becoming an 'also ran' in the EDU market.
If you think about it, you are already running an MS shop with AD, SCCM, and lots of Powershell. It's not too much of a stretch to take that institutional knowledge and add Hyper-V and SCVMM and be done with it at 1 - 5 % of the cost of VMware licensing.
Earlier this year our campus decided to stick with VMware for another year, but each year the technology gap for our environment closes and VMware remains doesn't adjust their pricing even when negotiating a State contract (nevermind that the VAR who used to hold the State contract appears to have been completely blindsighted by VMware negotiating directly and at least to an outsider it looks like an attempt to cut VARs out of State contracts (which is OK I suppose)). The VMware party line is that we are stuck with it because the cost of switching to different technology is far greater than just paying up year after year.
IMHO VMware doesn't get the EDU market at all. Commercial TCO/ROI doesn't apply in EDU. The time of the people who work in EDU is worthless when it comes to changing technology. The only cost that is considered is what you save in annual licensing fees. It doesn't matter if it takes 2,000 hours to make the switch because people are paid to be at work regardless of what they do.
I am reasonably certain that our campus will abandon VMware a year from now, and that the State will do the same a year from when the campus does. I don't think that VMware will change its licensing tune to bring it in line with MS licensing for EDU.
When the campus goes Hyper-V I will take our servers Hyper-V as well because I need to be in line with what the campus does for business continuity reasons. There will be more whitepapers from EDU customers who switched to Hyper-V, and the whole thing will snowball into VMware becoming an 'also ran' in the EDU market.
Sitting in an Azure session at MS TechEd.
You'd have been hard pressed to sit in a session not about Azure.
I did not absorb the kool-aid. I won't use Azure.