Over the past year, Microsoft's main rival has been pegged by many as Google.
The web firm has moved into the browser space with Chrome and is set to unveil its own operating system (OS), as Microsoft looks to expand into to lucrative online market. When it comes to consumers and the web, Google and Microsoft are in one heck of staring match.
Despite Google's advances in the enterprise, that's not the source of Microsoft's business challenge.
Earlier this week, the New York Times suggested Microsoft was fighting its battle on two fronts. Google was rival number one in the consumer space, while VMware was rival number two, taking on the software giant in its enterprise stronghold.
At annual conference in San Francisco this week, IT PRO spoke to operating officer Tod Nielsen, asking if his new firm had Microsoft in its sights.
"From a business perspective, Google is the issue on consumer, and we're the issue on enterprise," he said, adding: "My focus isn't beating Microsoft, it's transforming the industry."
VMware's virtualisation system doesn't replace the OS. It sits between it and hardware. But as VMware's products gain more and more features, the OS could become less important and firms might start looking to other platforms such as Linux to wrap around their applications, some believe.
As a former employee of Microsoft, even Nielsen is surprised at how much Microsoft's future is in the balance. "The OS is kind of getting squeezed," he said.
Years ago when starting out at the Redmond firm, he would have said there's no way any other firm would come between hardware and the OS. "We didn't have anyone looking underneath - that was our birthright," he said.
Microsoft and virtualisation
With such pressure, it's no surprise then that Microsoft has swiftly moved into the virtualisation space, releasing its own hypervisor for free - and forcing VMware to do the same.
"They are acting like they are concerned about us and our success in this space," he said. "They're trying to knock us off."
Nielsen explained that there seems to be three phases of virtualisation deployment at a company. The initial rollout is usually to solve a specific problem, such as to cut costs or move a data centre.
The second phase extends the tech to other areas of the business that have seen the success of the first phase. The third phase is where virtualisation becomes a part of the business - every new project is automatically assumed to use virtualisation.
Nielsen said VMware's latest products are about phase two and three, but Microsoft is still about saving costs in phase one. "That's so 2002," he said.
That said, Microsoft is having some luck with small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), who seem to appreciate the basic cost-cutting offered by Nielsen's "phase one virtualisation" - which may be why VMware is now offering new services targeted at smaller businesses.
VMware not worried
"Paul and I are both proud alumni of Microsoft," said Neilsen, explaining that it's not a personal rivalry. That said, it means they also know the software giant's tactics. Neilsen and Martiz were both there when Microsoft went head-to-head with Novell and others, he noted, adding "we know how they play that game."
"The common denominator for everybody they beat is those companies lost focus on what made them a success, and focused on Microsoft," Nielsen said.
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