VMware Virtualization Goes Generic

Looking to expand its market to reach more SMBs and geographies, VMware has announced that it will certify its VMware ESX and ESXi hypervisor on servers offered by certain white box manufacturers.

The virtualization vendor announced its new relationships with ODMs (original design manufacturers) ASUS, Gigabyte, Inventec and Tyan at Computex Taipei. The new ODM relationships are in addition to VMware's deal with Supermicro, announced in February.

VMware's move is designed to capture more of the SMB market and also make greater inroads in geographies where white box servers have a strong presence, according to Ben Matheson, director of product management.

"This opens up a much broader opportunity for VMware," he said. "The SMB space is definitely the laggard in terms of adoption of virtualization technology. About a quarter to a third of the servers that ship are ODM servers."

But that doesn't mean that SMBs aren't interested in virtualization.  According to Matheson, SMBs have the same pain points as enterprise companies. 

"Server virtualization becomes interesting at about five servers," he said.  "Then it helps reduce costs. Maybe we are only consolidating 10 or 15 servers down to two servers, but to those businesses that's a big chunk of money."

VMware ESX and ESXi are currently available on server systems from Supermicro and are expected to be available from ASUS, Gigabyte, Inventec and Tyan by the end of the third quarter of 2008.