Was Greene Kicked to the Curb or What?
Virtualization Critical Evaluation – Chapter 03
EMC, and to an extent VMware, think they are in trouble. Why else would Greene be kicked to the curb? I have refrained from comment in this blog about Greene until now. This has been a decision based on perspective, meaning that, since I have not been a CEO of one of the most significant firms in the last 10 years, nor walked in the shoes of Greene herself, I feel it is not my place to comment on her, as an individual, in any personal context. This is difficult because I feel her view of the virtualization industry, has in no small part created some issues for VMware. No one, I believe could decry the fact that VMware, as a company has been very careful for years to be say we are not, really, part of EMC. I remember being corrected by several VMware employees, or should I say, associates, since employee seems to be a dirty word, that EMC is nothing more than a necessary evil to protect VMware from others, did someone say Microsoft? What the heck does that mean? VMware is not really part of EMC? EMC paid hard cash for VMware, so to speak. Since when is purchase not ownership?
But regardless of your perspective on the EMC ownership of VMware, the negative impact of this philosophical view of non-ownership of VMware is real, painful in fact. When you are an EMC customer, and use VMware Virtual Infrastructure or a VMware customer and use EMC storage solutions, the internal infighting between EMC and VMware over the last few years has been nothing but frustrating. The disjointed nature of the relationship has done nothing to benefit EMC or VMware. I know this from personal experience, as well as from quite a few friends in the industry that work in or with virtualization scope, and the two entities. EMC says tomato, VMware says tamota? That is the last thing anyone wants to hear doing architectural design meetings, or even worse, after you get EMC and VMware to agree during design efforts, to be up at 3 am in the morning, on a weekend, working on a nasty storage processor issue with EMC behind your virtualization infrastructure, only to hear the VMware technical resource on the same conference call say…ah, why did you do that, we don’t support that…whatever that is…that should just never happen between EMC and VMware. Fortune 10, or even fortune 50, nay, fortune 100 firms have absolutely no patience for this type of bull, cough, zero tolerance for this type of foolishness, and again, I know this from direct experience.
So why was Greene kicked to the curb, if in fact that is what happened? Because I am not completely sure that is what happened. What is obvious? Is it that EMC and VMware not agreeing routinely seem a big enough issue to cause such shake up? I say maybe it was. Never mind the fact that VMware stock is slipping, never mind the fact that VMware has laid a few eggs that stink, ESX 3i, yes 3i, was a great idea, but either immature or marketed wrong, the classification is your choice. ESXi has not yet emerged as the Hyper-V killer it should have been? It is not an enterprise solution, yet. A fact that I have made known in the past. VCB which was a great idea, but just completely failed at any scale, approaching enterprise needs. I do understand how a storage technology firm can not create a backup solution that works at scale? That is core to their completive advantage! It happened because VMware ignored EMC? Yes, ignored, worse, VMware kept thinking, VCB must work for all customers, not just EMC customers. Maybe EMC will get it right with Avamar and VMware ESXi. That remains to be seen as well, but seems to have more potential than VCB did at a minimum.
I think the real reason that Greene was kicked to the curb was much darker. In fact, it goes to the core of VMware management direction, and policy. VMware does not know if it is an Enterprise client firm, or a small mom-and-pop firm. VMware is struggling with its identity when it should be 100% focused on its product development, and improvement, I said improvement, of its core business, not biased to innovation. Some say VMware has lost its way. That VMware is no longer listening to its non-Enterprise, smaller customers. That VMware is defending its self from Hyper-V by ignoring its smaller customers? Well, to be honest, that is exactly what I believe that Greene was focused on, the non-Enterprise customers, because of how VMware talks, walks, and explains about its self. I get this impression based on what and how she communicated to entire VMware organization. The scary thing is that small customers, in part become bigger customers, because they think and act like Enterprise customers, with hard work, a bit of luck, and thinking strategically, not tactically alone, any firm can become an Enterprise scale entity?
What is my evidence? In short, VMware does not listen to its enterprise customers, or has not for last few years in a consistent manner. VMware does not sound like a strategic thinking company even today at times, in how they present their new products, or new features. They still think like a smallish customer organization. Unfortunately, scale is everything, and profitability in competition with Microsoft is scale, scale, scale, and market share, market share, market share. Thus, VMware must reassert a two channel marketing plan, something that VMware has struggled with in the past. I have experienced this first hand. Growing faster than lightening has been confusing for VMware, but that is no excuse for VMware not catering to its enterprise customers, the way it must do, to survive. It is the big scale, large infrastructure firms that are going to allow VMware to survive. With the current economic situation, that the United States faces, in 2009, it is the major players of scale, that will have the resources and goals to continue with virtualization as the pace and scope that VMware must have to continue to be successful.
This is not to say that the smaller customers are not important, in fact, if VMware changes its cost model, which I believe must happen as well, to take some of the sting out of purchasing VMware solutions, small customers will continue to be significant, and help avoid de-facto acceptance of Hyper-V. But smallish customers can not continue to dominate the VMware thinking in reference to product design and evolution. It is just too easy for big customers, Enterprise scale, to go to Microsoft, which thinks big, does big, and is at its core focused on its cash cows, so addresses Enterprise customers concerns with easy and expectation enterprise customers demand. EMC sees this, and so, I think this is why Greene is sitting on the curb. The choice of the new CEO for VMware just screams…VMware is an Enterprise friendly firm, really we are, believe us, we are listening, well, we are now. The question is, just who, still, is listening, and who has already drank the Hyper-V favored cool-aid?
2 comments August 15th, 2008
