Unsurprisingly, VMWare's share prices have been down sharply by nearly 17 percent since Microsoft released Hyper-V for selected versions of Windows Server 2008.
Hyper-V is expected to allow companies to cut their number of servers by consolidating them, thereby cutting running and operating costs, and allowing improved hardware utilisation - your servers will be toiling harder rather than sitting idle most of the time.
Talking to Computerweekly.com, Bill Laing, corporate vice-president of Windows server and solutions division at Microsoft, said that "Hyper-V builds on Microsoft's focus to provide tools which IT pros can rely on for their demanding, mission-critical workloads."
Observers, like Jonathan Hassell, reckon that while Hypervisor is not a VMware killer for the time being for a number of reasons, the fact that it has Microsoft's might behind it combined with a compelling price make it a viable competitor.

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