Gartner is urging
businesses to put pressure on Microsoft to provide “commercially
reasonable” support for all
enterprise licensees running virtual machines (VMs), not just
Premier subscribers.
Gartner fellow, Brian Gammage, said, “Microsoft’s licensing
terms for
Windows Vista running in VMs are unjustified; in addition,
these terms are widely perceived as being designed to delay market
adoption of competitive
virtualisation software.”
Gammage said Microsoft’s restrictions had spurred users'
complaints, negative publicity and
renewed interest in open-source and competitive
alternatives.
Gartner expects Microsoft to release a
hypervisor
for Windows Vista by mid-2009, which would lead to a rapid increase
in the number of virtualised installations. Gammage said, “To
accommodate this change, Microsoft will need to make a number of
adjustments to Windows licensing and product use rights.”
He suggested that Microsoft has a strong motivation to delay
making these adjustments before its own hypervisor was ready
because it could provide some market advantage to rivals like
VMware. The end-user licence agreement for Windows Vista
contains significant restrictions on the use of Vista in VMs,
Gammage warned. “The restrictions on DRM and BitLocker directly
affect enterprise users.”
The tethering of Windows licences to hardware also affects
emerging enterprise Windows client deployment scenarios such as
portable personalities, Gammage warned. Enterprises should not
expect this licensing-related barrier to be lifted before
Microsoft’s Windows hypervisor is released.
Gammage urged users dissatisfied with Microsoft’s virtualisation
licensing restrictions and support policies for desktops and
servers to investigate the longer-term feasibility of removing
their dependency on Windows and Office. He also recommended users
who were unhappy with their virtualisation support from Micrsooft
to ensure browser-neutrality in all Web-enabled applications.
Responding to the criticisms about its virtualisation support,
Microsoft told Computer Weekly, “Microsoft does not provide general
product support for any third-party software.”
In an article on its website laying out its support policy,
Microsoft said it did not test or support Microsoft software
running in conjunction with non-Microsoft hardware virtualisation
software. “For Microsoft customers who do not have a Premier-level
support agreement, Microsoft will require the issue to be
reproduced independently from the non-Microsoft hardware
virtualisation software.”
For users of Microsoft software who have a Premier-level support
agreement, Microsoft said it would, “use commercially reasonable
efforts to investigate potential issues with Microsoft software
running in conjunction with non-Microsoft hardware virtualisation
software.”
When asked if Microsoft was working on changing its support policy,
a spokesperson said, “As virtualisation software matures and the
industry adoption goes mainstream, new and scalable technical
support models are needed. Microsoft is investigating business
models so that we could offer joint or co-operative technical
support with third-parties for non-Windows virtualisation
software.”
Users slam lack of virtual apps support >>
Support policy for Microsoft software running in non-Microsoft
hardware virtualization software >>
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