VMware has to be applauded for inventiveness. With HP, Dell, IBM, Fujitsu and Siemens all signed on to embed  its tiny 3i hypervisor, VMware's market lead is growing ever wider while Microsoft is still trying to get its Hyper V out the door.

Of course, VMware has got its own, excellent strategy for battling Microsoft when Hyper V is available and included free in Windows Server. It has VMware installed on the hardware, with a great big "phooey!" to the OS. The major server vendors of course, already sell servers pre-installed with VMware Infrastructure 3, the pricier and heftier version than the tiny 3i. The bigger version includes things such as disaster-recovery features and VMotion. But 3i will allow new customers to easily get their feet wet with VMware, even though it lacks these extra features. If Hyper V never grabs market share, the competition is at least motivating VMware to be creative. And that's good for the enterprise.

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