How Vmware Reshape the Tech Industry?

Course #: ITC6010

Course Name: IT Strategy and Governance

Professor: Eugene von Taube

Name: John Jairo Ortiz Martinez

How VMWare reshape the tech industry

1. The forgotten technology

Future technological development heavily relies on the success of its past achievements, virtualization is proof of such an assessment. This technology has its origins back in the 1960s when Intel and other companies were trying to solve a big problem in computer science. How to provide access to multiple users onto the same computer at the same time? Virtualization solved a problem by distributing the physical memory among different environments (and users) where each one performs tasks independently. It also came with several new advantages like if the operating system of one environment crashed, the others could still run without much issues (business continuity) or the user of the crashed environment could check the virtual memory and see exactly how it occurred (very useful for test development) [1]. In principle, it was a brilliant idea but it did not take off successfully. Instead, it was replaced with other technologies and paradigms like client-server applications for the next 30 years [2]. During those years, the servers were not powerful enough to run multiple operating systems without crashing and they were so inexpensive that companies would rather buy a bunch of servers, each one for a dedicated service than to explore virtualization. In essence, the technological environment at the time hindered the evolution of virtualization as a cost-effective solution to the many users/single machine problem.

However, by the late 1990s, the tech industry changed considerably due to technological advancements in telecommunication and semiconductors. Improvements in chip performance allowed servers to run operating systems with less than 10% of the processing power [2]. Thus, allowing a machine to run multiple operating systems without compromising its efficacy. Under this new scenario is when a small company, VMWare comes into play as a new entrant in the competitive tech industry. The founders of the company realized the timing was right to exploit the benefits of virtualization and tried to persuade multinational corporations like Microsoft to invest in this technology. However, the top executives did not pay much attention [3]. This was a strategic blunder for Microsoft, who could have benefited enormously from this idea.

VMWare executives realized the great opportunity they had in their hands. An unexploited technology with many potential benefits, very little drawbacks, and mostly free of big competitors who disregarded the idea as ridiculous. VMWare quickly invested in virtualization technology and by 1999, came up with their first product: VMWare 1.0. (later known as Workstation). This new software allowed users to run multiple virtual machines in a single desktop. The product was very well received by the programming community, especially the academic world with over 2000 universities buying this new product.