Otro frente de competencia para Microsoft

Mencionado primero en Denker Über, el nuevo frente abierto al predominio de Microsoft por VMware: "mientras Google es el ataque desde el “consumer side” la gente del virtualizador de sistemas operativos lo está atacando en datacenters y empresas… encima con el ex-número 3 de MSFT a la cabeza". Mariano Amartino comenta la nota de Steve Lohr en The New York Times. La afirmación de Lohr es que Google y VMware representan un riesgo serio al perdominio de Microsoft:

Google and VMware pose a broadly similar challenge to Microsoft, by potentially undermining the dominance of its most lucrative products, desktop software and operating systems. While Google represents the attack from above, VMware is the assault from beneath.
Google, the search giant, offers free advertising-supported software for e-mail, word processing, calendars and spreadsheets online, as alternatives to Microsoft’s popular Office products. For Web-based programs like these, it is the browser — not an operating system like Windows — that is the vital layer of software on the computer.

VMware is the leader in so-called virtual machine software, which allows a computer to run two or more operating systems at once. Its software resides on top of the hardware and beneath the operating system.

But as VMware’s technology becomes more powerful and it adds more features to its products, it can start to supplant the operating system from below — just as the browser can from above.

El artículo completo, en The New York Times.