Hypervisor commoditised: value moves to management tools

The 451 Group had a press release stating that "Thanks to open source projects, the hypervisor – the software layer that enables physical machines to run multiple virtual machines – has become a commodity. As a result, hypervisor vendors have become virtualization management vendors and are now selling virtualization administration". In one year, their list of private companies in the category "VM management" has grown from 6 companies to 50!

It's been years that we hear software will become a commodity, with Sun clearly following that direction. Virtualisation is a clear example of that trend, with the sector's current leader VMWare well aware of this, and offering free downloads of its basic solutions. But Free and Open Source solutions are moving also, as illustrated by Open QRM (which will be represented by its project manager at the Virtualisation event organised by Profoss, where a session titled "The future is in the management tools" will also be organised)