Good article but I think there is even more in the battle. Yes, as the article says, for example Novell might win some where the management is important but actually all the vendors are working for a common model. See DMTF CIM/WBEM extensions for virtual machines. Will it really be transparent? I don't think so but it will open the door, open standards and open management systems! There was an article "DMTF standardizes virtual server management" in NetworkWorld which mentions VMware and IBM but other vendors as Microsoft, Sun, etc are also fast implementing these standards.
Methods as physical-to-virtual (P2V) are important but mostly one time functions, continuing management, security and performance, for example, will play bigger role in long run. Also, there is (should be) a distinction between classes(?) of virtualization. It is not same to run big servers or run virtual environment in desktop, laptop, PDA or phone. The problems are different. VMware has done well delivering a cheap virtual environment for PC's and Mac's, and even if today mostly used by developers and some other special cases, it may change how systems are run as Java (VM) did.
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VMWare is Still The One To Beat
1) Microsoft's Hyper-V will be at 1.0 when it arrives in late summer-- if then. VMWare's doing great things, including building partnership communities similar to those in the Xen world, *now*.
2) No doubt VMWare will adjust prices at some point. They can't keep going the way that they have in the face of nearly free offerings (by comparison) from others.
3) Marketshare and mindshare are important, and VMWare has momentum. 80% is tough to beat.
4) The miscellaneous forks of Xen don't help it much. There's Citrix/XenSource, the Xen Project itself, xVM, Virtual Iron, and the ostensible but unproven Hyper-V components. This is a disarray that IT people are unlikely to tolerate in what amounts to a mandatory HA environment.
Overall, VMWare's going to need flexibility to retain marketshare. Hyper-V is so much gas until it's production, and then we'll wait at least several quarters before wanting to put it into production. Xen is very important, and it's not up to the quality of VMWare in many ways, including cohesiveness, 3rd party support, drivers/compatibility, and 'community'. Maybe it'll catch up. Maybe not.