Customer Service at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Consultant
Top 20
Aug 8, 2014
Maybe you should ask this from Gartner directly ;=) - but yes agree.
It is obvious that vmware was the first ones to have very good virtualization products and that made them very strong in this area and they still are. vmware is one of the best if you look for the features and market share and support etc.. They have probably also with EMC very good vision and strategy so in any case using vmware solutions you will most probably achieve your business goals. But in cloud layer there are also very good alternatives open source and commercial - for virtualization layer take a look eg. docker, citrix, ivm, hyper-v which all are quite mature and good for their purpose and for orchestration and integration there are also many. One thing with vmware is that they tend to cover whole stack and also support in certain level also other alternatives. Oracle also covers whole stack with their own optimized (engineered) solutions. Open source field Docker looks promising, AWS continues to be market leader and Eucalyptus, openstack, juju and many others are very good competitors for vmware (or vice versa). So, hypervisor layer is not the issues any more it is more upper layers and how they work and integrate together. Depend on your enterprise architecture and your business need what should be the most beneficial solution for you and in many cases vmware can fulfill most of the requirements very well. Calculate your business case very carefully especially license costs might surprise you and I mean all licenses not only vmware ones but databases, applications etc. in AWS type of public cloud cases also backup, transfer(connectivity, data traffic) costs, and training costs for support etc. So summary: Vmware positioned in leader: yes because their mature products, good product portfolio and vision and strategy and support. Company's financial position strong, alliance with EMC good and continues to support other solutions too. developers might like the API, there are many 3rd party vendors doing solution for vmware stack. Products quality and features are very good.
Oracle Web Administrator at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Consultant
Top 20
Jul 15, 2014
VMware has a well earned and well deserved reputation as a leader in the virtualization space. VMware was by no means the first vendor to develop virtualization -- that would be IBM back in the 70s on their mainframes. However, VMware was/is the market leader in popularizing virtualization in the 21st Century for servers, desktops and applications. VMware's hypervisor was the first to market and the market leader in the early 2000s. VMware introduced and continues to deliver leading edge features. These include live migration, data replication, data backup, mirroring etc.
VMware has a well earned and well deserved reputation as a leader in the virtualization space. VMware was by no means the first vendor to develop virtualization -- that would be IBM back in the 70s on their mainframes. However, VMware was/is the market leader in popularizing virtualization in the 21st Century for servers, desktops and applications. VMware's hypervisor was the first to market and the market leader in the early 2000s. VMware introduced and continues to deliver leading edge features. These include live migration, data replication, data backup, mirroring etc.
At the same time, competitors like Microsoft, Citrix, Red Hat et al ARE have closed the gap and also offer excellent products, features, technical service and support and integration. There are also many new startups entering this space that compete with and complement VMware's offerings with specific, targeted functionality in management, storage, database support, downtime prevention etc. Newcomers like CloudPhysics, Neverfail, Infinio, HotLink, Delphix et al are all worth checking out to supplement your virtualization infrastructure.
That said, in addition to features and functions, pricing and technical service and support are also factors to consider when looking at VMware or any of the virtualization vendors. Because VMware was the first to market in the early 2000s and established significant market share, it also commands a price premium. This can range from 20% to as much as 70% depending on individual company implementation and size. This is not to say that customers can't get a good deal on VMware but just a fair warning that in order to get a good deal you should shop and compare other offerings and be prepared to do some negotiating. Do your homework, call other vendors & resellers and get quotes. Then present these to VMware (or other vendors on your short list) and see what they're willing to do. Best of luck!
Manager of Infrastructure at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
Consultant
Jun 28, 2014
The missing piece of the puzzle I can determine from all the excellent submissions so far is that VMWare has a far superior integration framework and third part support. Data backup and data replication are two seamless no frills task that can be achieve using VMWare.
Oracle Web Administrator at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Consultant
Top 20
Jun 26, 2014
I agree. VMware is a very mature technology with more than 10 years running in the datacenters around the world. Many solutions were tested on this platform.
Agreed. However, if you are looking at over ALL costs then VMware is one of the most out of the box products on the market. Gartner needs provide a table of all additional products are required to support their products. It becomes more clear to that those SMB who are price sensitive are not going with VMware or Citrix or Microsoft.
VMWare is the grandfather of virtualization. Everyone has tried everything with it. It is a mature platform. I have to disagree with Jagdish, you still need to patch VMWare but there is an automated way of completing that chore. The only con I have seen with VMWare, is the licensing cost. Because of the flexibility of VMWare, there are a large number of additional products that can drive up your costs quickly. There are other virtualization platforms out there that don't require the additional licensing costs (like adding vCenter) to your deployment.
Does VMWare belong at the top of the quadrant? Yes, but only due to the time in the marketspace. The other vendors are quickly catching up.
Works at a non-tech company with 501-1,000 employees
Vendor
Jun 26, 2014
We are using vCenter 5.5 Power CLI API for C# .Net to develop a customized resource scheduler. We currently have 6 hosts. We are using educational licence from VMware. It is very flexible through vSphere client and Web Client to manage the hosts and VM. It is even more flexible with .Net based tool that we are developing as a research project. We have also created a monitoring system inwhich we have integrated the host usage, VM usage data with external sensor data such as temperature and power usage of each host.
However we are still researching on doing live migration (without vMlotion) through .Net SDK of vCenter Power CLI.
VMware is the most complete Visualization offering that is why in belongs in top Quadrant. It is stable and has been adding features with every new release and the different version in the release, I have worked with VMware for nine years most recently with 5.1
The licensing system EMC uses, based on the number of sockets, for me is
just stupid and unacceptable!
It punishes high density, instead of awarding it like every other
Virtualization system!
For several years my deployments were based on XEN from Citrix (which I
consider technically superior compared to VWWare in every single aspect!), but in the last 4 years I am using a KVM based system called Proxmox (www.proxmox.com) and it completely satisfies my needs.
we have been using VMware for the past 3 years. Much to the fact that it's stable, reliable, robust , secure above all flexible. We are running 7 host's of Esxi 5.1 and around 70+ virtual servers.
We can twist the setup according to our demand. The configuration is so simple that anyone can easily handle.
Server Virtualization Software enables a single physical server to run multiple virtual machines, optimizing resource use and maintenance. This approach offers greater flexibility and efficient workload management.Businesses leverage Server Virtualization Software to enhance agility and manage IT resources effectively. By partitioning physical servers into multiple virtual environments, organizations can consolidate workloads, reduce hardware costs, and streamline IT operations. Users often...
Maybe you should ask this from Gartner directly ;=) - but yes agree.
It is obvious that vmware was the first ones to have very good virtualization products and that made them very strong in this area and they still are. vmware is one of the best if you look for the features and market share and support etc.. They have probably also with EMC very good vision and strategy so in any case using vmware solutions you will most probably achieve your business goals. But in cloud layer there are also very good alternatives open source and commercial - for virtualization layer take a look eg. docker, citrix, ivm, hyper-v which all are quite mature and good for their purpose and for orchestration and integration there are also many. One thing with vmware is that they tend to cover whole stack and also support in certain level also other alternatives. Oracle also covers whole stack with their own optimized (engineered) solutions. Open source field Docker looks promising, AWS continues to be market leader and Eucalyptus, openstack, juju and many others are very good competitors for vmware (or vice versa). So, hypervisor layer is not the issues any more it is more upper layers and how they work and integrate together. Depend on your enterprise architecture and your business need what should be the most beneficial solution for you and in many cases vmware can fulfill most of the requirements very well. Calculate your business case very carefully especially license costs might surprise you and I mean all licenses not only vmware ones but databases, applications etc. in AWS type of public cloud cases also backup, transfer(connectivity, data traffic) costs, and training costs for support etc. So summary: Vmware positioned in leader: yes because their mature products, good product portfolio and vision and strategy and support. Company's financial position strong, alliance with EMC good and continues to support other solutions too. developers might like the API, there are many 3rd party vendors doing solution for vmware stack. Products quality and features are very good.
VMware has a well earned and well deserved reputation as a leader in the virtualization space. VMware was by no means the first vendor to develop virtualization -- that would be IBM back in the 70s on their mainframes. However, VMware was/is the market leader in popularizing virtualization in the 21st Century for servers, desktops and applications. VMware's hypervisor was the first to market and the market leader in the early 2000s. VMware introduced and continues to deliver leading edge features. These include live migration, data replication, data backup, mirroring etc.
VMware has a well earned and well deserved reputation as a leader in the virtualization space. VMware was by no means the first vendor to develop virtualization -- that would be IBM back in the 70s on their mainframes. However, VMware was/is the market leader in popularizing virtualization in the 21st Century for servers, desktops and applications. VMware's hypervisor was the first to market and the market leader in the early 2000s. VMware introduced and continues to deliver leading edge features. These include live migration, data replication, data backup, mirroring etc.
At the same time, competitors like Microsoft, Citrix, Red Hat et al ARE have closed the gap and also offer excellent products, features, technical service and support and integration. There are also many new startups entering this space that compete with and complement VMware's offerings with specific, targeted functionality in management, storage, database support, downtime prevention etc. Newcomers like CloudPhysics, Neverfail, Infinio, HotLink, Delphix et al are all worth checking out to supplement your virtualization infrastructure.
That said, in addition to features and functions, pricing and technical service and support are also factors to consider when looking at VMware or any of the virtualization vendors. Because VMware was the first to market in the early 2000s and established significant market share, it also commands a price premium. This can range from 20% to as much as 70% depending on individual company implementation and size. This is not to say that customers can't get a good deal on VMware but just a fair warning that in order to get a good deal you should shop and compare other offerings and be prepared to do some negotiating. Do your homework, call other vendors & resellers and get quotes. Then present these to VMware (or other vendors on your short list) and see what they're willing to do. Best of luck!
Yes.
Why? Because they've benefited from their learning curve advances.
The missing piece of the puzzle I can determine from all the excellent submissions so far is that VMWare has a far superior integration framework and third part support. Data backup and data replication are two seamless no frills task that can be achieve using VMWare.
I agree. VMware is a very mature technology with more than 10 years running in the datacenters around the world. Many solutions were tested on this platform.
Agreed. However, if you are looking at over ALL costs then VMware is one of the most out of the box products on the market. Gartner needs provide a table of all additional products are required to support their products. It becomes more clear to that those SMB who are price sensitive are not going with VMware or Citrix or Microsoft.
VMWare is the grandfather of virtualization. Everyone has tried everything with it. It is a mature platform. I have to disagree with Jagdish, you still need to patch VMWare but there is an automated way of completing that chore. The only con I have seen with VMWare, is the licensing cost. Because of the flexibility of VMWare, there are a large number of additional products that can drive up your costs quickly. There are other virtualization platforms out there that don't require the additional licensing costs (like adding vCenter) to your deployment.
Does VMWare belong at the top of the quadrant? Yes, but only due to the time in the marketspace. The other vendors are quickly catching up.
Easy to configure., no need for patches like Microsoft and less dependencies over related infrastructures.
Much to the fact that it's stable, reliable, robust, secure above all flexible. We are running 7 host's of Esxi 5.1 and around 70+ virtual servers.
We are using vCenter 5.5 Power CLI API for C# .Net to develop a customized resource scheduler. We currently have 6 hosts. We are using educational licence from VMware. It is very flexible through vSphere client and Web Client to manage the hosts and VM. It is even more flexible with .Net based tool that we are developing as a research project. We have also created a monitoring system inwhich we have integrated the host usage, VM usage data with external sensor data such as temperature and power usage of each host.
However we are still researching on doing live migration (without vMlotion) through .Net SDK of vCenter Power CLI.
VMware is the most complete Visualization offering that is why in belongs in top Quadrant. It is stable and has been adding features with every new release and the different version in the release, I have worked with VMware for nine years most recently with 5.1
We have been working with VMware vSphere for 8 years, in more then 250+ Esxi hosts,. it's working really good and 2 vCenters.
I do neither agree nor disagree with it .
The licensing system EMC uses, based on the number of sockets, for me is
just stupid and unacceptable!
It punishes high density, instead of awarding it like every other
Virtualization system!
For several years my deployments were based on XEN from Citrix (which I
consider technically superior compared to VWWare in every single aspect!), but in the last 4 years I am using a KVM based system called Proxmox (www.proxmox.com) and it completely satisfies my needs.
Fábio Rabelo
Hi,
we have been using VMware for the past 3 years. Much to the fact that it's stable, reliable, robust , secure above all flexible. We are running 7 host's of Esxi 5.1 and around 70+ virtual servers.
We can twist the setup according to our demand. The configuration is so simple that anyone can easily handle.