VMware's aggressive product road map for 2009

VMware will continue to advance its ESX hypervisor offering against growing competition by delivering on an aggressive product road map for 2009.

Throughout VMworld 2008, audience members were made privy to VMware's aggressive product road map for 2009. I remember sitting through one of the keynotes thinking to myself, "What aren't they going to do?"

As Microsoft, Citrix, and others continue to turn the competitive heat and pressure up on VMware, the virtualization giant will be forced to look elsewhere besides its core hypervisor technology to continue earning the revenue numbers that they have been enjoying. I realize that some in the industry hate to hear about the hypervisor becoming a commodity, but as the hypervisor technology itself continues to get squashed down to "free," companies like VMware will have to continue looking toward additional software to further extend their platform to justify the cost.

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And VMware really does seem to have an aggressive road map lined up for 2009. Looking at the company's Web site, there are quite a few products listed under something called "Products Coming in 2009."

If you attended VMworld 2008, this probably isn't the first time you've seen or heard about many of these products. And some of these products have been around even longer than that. If you remember Dunes Technologies and VMware's acquisition of that company, you might recognize VMware vCenter Orchestrator. I remember being introduced to a company called B-hive during VMworld 2007, and they too were acquired by VMware, giving us VMware vCenter AppSpeed. And we've talked about a few of these other coming soon products before as well, like VMware Fault Tolerance and VMware VMSafe.

But perhaps you haven't heard about these: