In 2012, VMware accomplished a lot by sketching out a vision of the software-defined data center as the direction it’s headed. It sees virtualization not as the one-time technology transition early implementers expected, rather as an ongoing process of applying more automation to all forms of data center operations.

Despite the heavy R&D such a vision demands, VMware is on a path to grow revenue at a rate of nearly $ 1 billion a year. At the end of 2011, it had revenue of $ 3.77 billion, and it was on course to achieve $ 4.5-$ 4.6 billion in 2012. Its rate of growth — 20% — was slowing, but still healthy in the third quarter of 2012. If that growth can be sustained, VMware is well down the path toward becoming one of the giants of the technology industry.

In the coming year, the reach of VMware’s goals will require it to juggle some possibly conflicting options and act on key issues to maintain its momentum. Here are five suggestions for how VMware should proceed.

1. Offer Hypervisor Performance Information (Users: Don’t Hold Your Breath)

We need more benchmark information on ESX Server hypervisor performance, even though “performance” isn’t the only consideration in installing virtualization. The general virtual machine (VM) management environment is certainly as important as baseline performance. Still, efficient execution of tasks is a leading attribute of software, with varying capability often hidden in a set of similar but competing products. If Microsoft, Citrix or Red Hat can claim a performance advantage over ESX Server, it will speed up the painfully slow inroads they’ve made in VMware’s customer base. I suspect the leading hypervisors aren’t that far apart when it comes to performance. Some testing indicates that, while other testing shows performance gaps.
Network Computing