Microsoft's Virtualization Chief: Watch For Us In The Cloud

In a recent interview, Mike Neil, Microsoft's general manager of virtualization, said the Hyper-V hypervisor and Virtual Machine Manager component of Microsoft's System Center are designed to support virtualization both on premises and in the cloud.

First he claimed it was one-third price to manage a virtual machine environment under Windows Server 2008 and Systems Center's Virtual Machine Manager versus VMware. But he said it wasn't Microsoft's goal to gain market share through lower license fees. "We don't look at it as a matter of us taking customers from VMware. We look at it as a matter of how do we grow the pie," he said.

With Hyper-V now available either independently or as part of Windows Server 2008, and Virtual Machine Manager available since late October, Microsoft's "ISV community is excited about the new possibilities," and can be expected to generate new applications that are design for a managed, virtualized environment, he said.