A brief history of VMware

I was doing some research for a virtualization 101 presentation that I am giving for a local VMware User’s Group meeting. I am going to include a few slides on the history of VMware. I focused mainly on the release dates for the virtualization products which I pieced together from a number of sources including the roadmap from virtualization.info, milestones and news releases from VMware’s website and a few tips from other users. You can see from the number of product releases and VMworld attendance that virtualization has really taken off in recent years, which really shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. I’ve only been using VMware ESX since 2005, having started with version 2.5.

I know there are a lot of veterans out there though that have been using it since the early days. If you’re one of those VMware old-timers who’ve used any of the 1.0 and 2.0 products let us know about it in the comments and tell your experiences from the early days.

1998

• VMware founded by Diane Greene, Dr. Mendel Rosenblum and Ed Bugnion

1999

• VMware Workstation 1.0 released for Windows and Linux

2000

• VMware Workstation 2.0 released

2001

• VMware ESX 1.0 (Elastic Sky X)  and VMware GSX 1.0 (Ground Storm X) released
• VMware Workstation 3.0 released

2002

• VMware ESX 1.5 released
• VMware GSX Server 2.0 released

2003

• VMware VirtualCenter 1.0 released with VMotion
• VMware ESX 2.0 released with vSMP support
• P2V Assistant 1.0 released
• VMware GSX Server 2.5 released
• VMware Workstation 4.0 released

2004

• 1st VMworld conference in San Diego, CA (1,400 attendees)
• VMware ESX 2.5 released
• VMware GSX Server 3.0 released
• VMTN technical communities launched
• EMC acquires VMware

2005

• VMware Player 1.0 released
• P2V Assistant 2.0 released
• Second VMworld conference (3,500 attendees)
• VMware Workstation 5.0 and 5.5 released

2006

• Third VMworld conference (6,700 attendees)
• VMware Infrastructure 3 released with VMware ESX 3.0 and VirtualCenter 2.0
• VMware Server 1.0 released, VMware GSX dropped from product line

2007

• Fourth VMworld conference (10,800 attendees)
• VMware ESX 3i released
• VMware Converter 3.0 released (formerly P2V Assistant)
• VMware Fusion 1.0 for Mac released
• VMware ESX 3.5 and VirtualCenter 2.5 released
• VMware Workstation 6.0 released

2008

• Fifth VMworld conference (14,000 attendees)
• VMware Fusion 2.0 released
• VMware Server 2.0 released
• VMware Workstation 6.5 released
• VMware ESXi becomes available for free
• Paul Maritz takes over as CEO

2009

• VMware Converter 4.0 released
• VMware Infrastructure 4 to be released