I get quoted quite a bit in my role as an analyst and on most occasions I agree with the context in which my quotes are used. Sometimes I see my quotes appear in articles like this one and feel the need to fully articulate my position. First let me say that I like and respect Alex Barrett. I’ve worked with her for a number of years and she is one of the best in the business. However, sometimes we’re not on the same page. Heck, I’ve been married for over 12 years and I’m not always on the same page with my wife either. It happens.

That all being said, I want to clarify some of my points in the article. The first one is with vendor incentives for reference accounts. It’s no secret in IT circles that vendors will make deals with reference accounts to compensate for their time. Incentives could come in the form of discounted software, professional services, etc. A few folks took my statements to imply that I thought Microsoft was bribing Nissan. That’s not the case at all. I was talking about vendor incentives in a general context and not specific to Microsoft. I encourage clients to pilot multiple hypervisors even if they are set on a particular vendor solution. Why? It gives them leverage when negotiating price. If an IT organization isn’t aggressively negotiating with vendors to secure discounts in the sales cycle, they’re not trying hard enough. VMware and Citrix offer aggressive discounts to win deals too. In the specific case of Microsoft and Nissan, I can’t comment because I haven’t spoken with the Nissan folks. Again, my quote was aimed at identifying a longstanding vendor process. While vendors may offer incentives to reference accounts, they are typically very forthright with encouraging them to be completely honest about their experiences, and that’s always been the case with the Microsoft reference customers I’ve worked with.

So why would Nissan implement Hyper-V even though they were initially hurt by its lack of live migration? The answer is pretty common. Again, I haven’t spoken with Nissan directly, but I’ll speculate. Server virtualization is an infrastructure technology. It’s sticky. When you lay down a virtual infrastructure, there can be a significant cost to replace it. For starters, you may have to convert VMs from one format to another. That could involve converting virtual disks and replacing paravirtualized device drivers, as well as downtime. On top of that, you may be replacing management tools and retraining users on self-service portals. That brings me back to Microsoft. Their message all along has been “Trust us. We’re not their yet, but we will be.” Many longstanding Microsoft shops trust Microsoft. They’d rather give up a feature or two than rip and replace their virtual infrastructure in a few years. This strategy allows them to grow with Microsoft without having to be concerned about the costs of switching hypervisors. Many of these organizations are already using many of the Microsoft System Center tools to manage their infrastructure, and they know they have a familiar interface in System Center Virtual Machine Manager.

At Burton Group, we have clients that have been using Microsoft virtualization since Virtual Server 2005. I’m not talking about mom and pop shops either. I’ve worked with very large US federal agencies that have sizable Virtual Server (and now Hyper-V) deployments. Again, numerous business drivers complemented the technical drivers in product selection. Did I work with one organization that thought the technology was forced on them? You bet. That happens across all product spectrums. In what now seems like ions ago when I worked for CommVault Systems, I would go into some pretty hostile environments that wanted nothing to do with the CommVault software. This also happens with virtualization deployments. When certain members of an IT organization feel they aren’t involved enough in the process, they aren’t as enthusiastic about the implementation, to say the least. Still, as Alex also noted, I told her about a half dozen or so clients who were completely satisfied with Hyper-V from the get-go.

There is never a one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to technology, and virtualization is no different. Sure I talk about VMware products with a lot of clients, but I also talk about Microsoft and Citrix virtualization quite a bit too. Technology influences product decision, but company culture, product familiarity, cost, and established vendor relationships do as well.

If you want to hear more about hypervisor differences, I encourage you to stop by session TA2400 “Hypervisor Competitive Differences: What the Vendors aren’t Telling You” next week at VMworld North America. We’ll be doing a side-by-side comparison of vSphere 4.0, XenServer 5.5, and Hyper-V R2. You’ll see dozens of low level technical differentiators that may appear similar on a data sheet. In the session, you’ll see a lot of check boxes. As you know, product selection goes beyond counting check boxes. Look at the features that are most important to you and the platforms that are strategically aligned with your long term IT direction. As I said before, the virtualization layer is an infrastructure technology and product selection isn’t always about “right now” for all organizations. In my opinion, that’s a big reason why Nissan went with Hyper-V.