The battle lines are drawn with VMware on one side and Microsoft on the other. Who will win the 
war of minds and hearts of enterprises concerning virtualization technologies? Back in 1999 when VMware introduced the first PC-based virtualization product (VMware Workstation) I was still working as a Microsoft Certified Trainer (MCT) at Productivity Point. It’s true that VMware wasn’t the first vendor to bring virtualization software to market—Connectrix actually entered the market earlier in 1997 with their Virtual PC product, but that was for the Mac platform and they didn’t release their Intel version of the product until 2001. Around this time, speculation was rife in our MCT newsgroups that Microsoft might try and acquire one of these two companies in order to gain a foothold in the emerging virtualization market.
Most MCTs thought Microsoft would probably go for VMware as they considered their offerings more powerful and easier to use and manage. But Microsoft surprised us and chose instead to acquire Connectrix’s virtualization software assets, and soon Microsoft Virtual PC was born and then Microsoft Virtual Server. Why were MCTs so interested in virtualization anyway? Because the courses they taught were a pain to set up in classrooms, and the possibility of using virtual machines to teach Microsoft Official Curriculum (MOC) courses seemed like bliss compared to the existing method.
In any case, it was probably for the best that Microsoft acquired what may have been the lesser of the two platforms, as the result has been intense competition between VMware and Microsoft to see who can produce the best virtualization products. In other words, competition stimulates innovation, and nowhere is this more visible than in the rapidly changing virtualization arena as we can see in this interview I recently conducted with Charlie Russel, a Microsoft MVP and expert in virtualization technologies, which I’m sure you readers of WindowsNetworking.com will find interesting. Virtualization Shootout
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