Can’t we all just get along? Um, no

Eric Siebert should be commended for the blog he wrote today, calling on the major virtualization vendors to “stop bickering with each other … and work towards the betterment of virtualization.”

Siebert, a virtualization expert and SearchServerVirtualization.com contributor, said the virtualization market should be more like sports: full of fierce competition, but also mutual respect and professionalism between competitors. He even illustrated his point with a photo of a UCLA player helping a crying Adam Morrison to his feet after Gonzaga’s 2006 NCAA Tournament loss.

Unfortunately, for every touching moment like that, there’s one like this:


Or this:


Or this:


Tensions run high in sports because of all the money on the line, and the same is true in the virtualization market. It would be great if Microsoft and VMware could be more civil towards each other, but let’s look at the track record there:

• April 2008: VMware accuses of Microsoft of knowingly distributing an inaccurate Yankee Group report that didn’t exactly paint VMware in the best light.
• September 2008: Microsoft launches a guerrilla marketing campaign at VMworld 2008, handing out poker chips that advertise a now-defunct website called VMwareCostsWayTooMuch.com.
• April 2009: Microsoft posts its smugness-tinged “Top 10 VMware Myths” video. Even some Microsoft loyalists decry the video as “embarrassing,” and VMware proponents fire back in force.
• June 2009: VMware’s Scott Drummonds is forced to apologize for anonymously posting a misleading video that showed Hyper-V crashing while running VMware’s VMmark platform and implied that Hyper-V caused massive TechNet and MSDN outages. Microsoft’s Jeff Woolsey wrote of VMware at the time: “This isn’t how billion dollar companies behave.”
• August 2009: Even though a year had passed since a VMware ESX bug caused serious VMotion and VM booting problems, Microsoft’s Woolsey still wrote a three-part blog slamming VMware for the problem.

The history speaks for itself. VMware won’t be helping a crying Microsoft up to its feet anytime soon.