I will not go over the details of this announcement that was released today.
Both David Davis and Sean Clark wrote very good articles about the release.

I do want to add a small point of my own, and that is why I think this is a big thing - or at least the start of a big thing.

There is no doubt that:

• VMware is the current market leader.
• Microsoft see VMware as the biggest competitor in the virtualization market.
• vSphere is the more mature product (and depends who you ask, more robust as well).

After this announcement it is clear - Hyper-V is here to stay.

I am a VMware fan (if you haven't noticed then you are not following my blog) but part of my job is to provide the best solution to my customer - and that solution depends on the customer. If the solution that suits them best is not based on VMware technology - then so be it - because it is right for the customer.

A year or two ago - the vendor bashing and FUD from both sides was in abundance, Microsoft said you don't need this feature - and VMware said you cannot live without it. VMware said that Microsoft does provide this - and Microsoft played catch up with the technology race to get those features that VMware has. Bad mouthing - from both sides - but I am happy to say - that it has calmed down as of late - and both parties are focusing on what they have - and not on what the competitor's do not.

So back to Veeam's announcement and why is this a big thing (IMHO)? Veeam is a company that has based 100% of their product (and revenue) on VMware. From day one. I think that it has paid off and they have found a very good place in the market for all of their products. And now the announcement that they will be adding support for Hyper-V. If a company that has based their complete business on VMware - are now opening up to different Hypervisors - then is a turning point. Not only is Microsoft getting part of the customer share - and how much is not the issue - they have started to get into the surrounding companies that make their bread and butter off of virtualization. I have - for a while - been asking any vendor that I have tried their technology, what are your plans for multi-platform support. Be it monitoring solutions, backup solutions capacity management or cloud - and I hearing always the same answer - at present we do not - but it is on the roadmap! Some for Hyper-V some for XEN, some for RHEV and some for all of the above. Veeam is not alone - the ISV's realize that they cannot afford not think about supporting multiple vendors and this is a good thing especially for Microsoft

Veeam is going the extra mile here by developing features that do not even exist for Hyper-V, as you can see the slide below

I will not be going into the debate of what the better/faster/cheaper/sexier product is. I do have to agree though, Microsoft is gaining market share - both with the customer and with the ISV's as well.

I would be happy to hear any comments.