VKernel just saw a battle card from VMware comparing VMware CapacityIQ to the VKernel portfolio of products and was devastated to learn that VMware is aggressively positioning its offering against that of VKernel. Although this may come as a surprise to VKernel, VMware is interested in selling a complete virtualization stack which includes capacity management. And there is no point to complain about it. To compete on the VMware platform against VMware is extremely difficult, so there are several strategies:

1. Diversify virtualization platform support

Besides VMware, there are many other vendors such as Citrix, Microsoft, Oracle and Parallels offering competitive virtualization solutions. These vendors provide ISV partners with more opportunities to offer complimentary solutions. However, given that VMware is still the leader in the virtualization space, supporting the VMware platform is essential even if it means having some overlap with the platform vendor.

2. Find whitespace in the VMware management stack

This is becoming very challenging since VMware is determined to provide a complete management stack for its platform - there is very little whitespace for partners. VMware is not moving up the stack just to grow revenues - it is also doing so to sustain revenues since the hypervisor is a commodity.

3. Innovate and differentiate

VMware is a massive company with significant resources behind its products. There is no point competing with brute force sales and marketing against VMware - this battle is over before it even starts. VKernel is just burning its precious venture capital trying to do so. Instead, it's critical to innovate more quickly and build differentiated offerings that go beyond what VMware is able to deliver. And to do so in a sustainable fashion.

VKernel is simply witnessing standard competitive pressures from a platform vendor. There is no surprise that VMware is showing prospects side-by-side comparisons versus VKernel. One of these battle cards probably exists for just about every vendor that has overlap with VMware.

So what have we done at Lanamark? First, Lanamark diversified and started supporting all the leading platforms, not just VMware. We are working with Citrix, Microsoft, Oracle, Parallels and VMware partners who are delivering desktop and data center optimization (and virtualization) solutions and services. Second, Lanamark provides unified instrumentation, analytics and system design capabilities that span across applications, users, workloads and the underlying IT infrastructure (both physical and virtual, from the desktop to the data center). Finally, Lanamark is innovating at a much faster pace than the team responsible for VMware Capacity Planner, providing VMware partners with unprecedented ability to accelerate design and delivery of optimized VMware solutions.

VMware partners world-wide continue to choose Lanamark Suite because Lanamark provides superior product capabilities, better field support and unparalleled responsiveness to feedback from both customers and partners. Lanamark is not feeling the love from VMware but we are certainly feeling the love from VMware partners, customers and prospects using our products every day to design and optimize VMware data centers.

VMware recently published an interesting blog article on how to use VMware vCenter CapacityIQ to righ-size VMs. The article highlights that capacity planning in a virtual environment is much more complex than in a physical environment due to shared resources, VM migrations and other factors. It also shows depth of thinking from the VMware product team building VMware vCenter CapacityIQ.

While vendors such as VKernel have dismissed VMware vCenter CapacityIQ as an inferior product, that certainly does not seem to be the case. It's also clear that all virtualization vendors will need to have capacity planning in their arsenal if they want to compete effectively with the expanding VMware management stack.

Our view at Lanamark is that capacity management will ultimately be delivered as a service and hence why Lanamark is focused on enabling IT solution providers delivering desktop and data center optimization services, rather than trying to sell its products directly to enterprises, or competing with partners by bundling services.

Liquidware Labs just added another product to its lineup called "Liquidware Labs Jumpstart." Since there is no mention of partner involvement, it's likely that Liquidware Labs is now offering services directly to customers and competing with its services partners.

And of course Liquidware Labs claims "agent-free design - no software to install, zero resources used" when in reality it continues to use agents. In a recent video, Tyler Rohrer decided to call the Stratusphere agent "virtual agent" rather than completely misleading the audience.

Update (June 25, 2010)

After this blog post went live, Liquidware Labs promptly added "The offering provides for optional integration services from our partner community to help guide your overall project to success." to the desciption of Liquidware Labs Jumpstart. What's interesting is the "optional integration services" statement for an offering Liquidware Labs describes as "Software + Integration Services." The question still stands - does Liquidware Labs deliver services and compete or does it always engage services partners?

Today, Liquidware Labs announced a new version of Stratusphere, claiming "Liquidware Labs Stratusphere v4.6 Sheds Desktop Agent..." and "new agent-less design." Then in the middle of the middle paragraph of its press release, Liquidware Labs says:

"To get started with an assessment, the administrator simply applies the Stratusphere module to selected user(s) through a straight-forward Microsoft Group Policy Setting. Stratusphere then runs silently on the chosen desktops, quietly gathering usage data and performance metrics..." David Bieneman underscores the "new agent-less desktop design..." towards the end of the press release.

In contrast, Alessandro accurately explained in his blog that Liquidware Labs Stratusphere "monitors users by attaching a stealth agent to their Microsoft Active Directory account through Group Policy."

Despite the agent being tied to users through Group Policy, it doesn't change the fact that a module "runs silently on chosen desktops." Obviously Liquidware Labs improved its agent deployment capability, but it is misleading to suggest that Stratusphere is using an agent-less approach.

When David and Tyler launched Liquidware Labs a year ago, we assumed that the lack of ethics only applies to competitors since our legal counsel had to send a letter to David Bieneman and request that "Lanamark Copyrighted Material be removed and destroyed on or before May 31, 2009" after Liquidware Labs decided to copy portions of the Lanamark website (Liquidware Labs promptly complied). In our opinion the high ethical standards seem to apply to Liquidware Labs customers and partners as well.

Come visit us and Redapt Systems in Booth 516. We will be showing a preview of Lanamark Suite Express which will be available for free to both enterprises and IT solution providers in June.

VKernel just released a free tool called VKernel AppVIEW, an "extremely powerful tool to monitor, diagnose, and resolve capacity bottlenecks in application virtual machines." What's misleading about the name of this tool is that it doesn't actually profile applications. Instead, it profiles virtual machines using basic metrics.

The challenge with profiling applications is that the data collector must look at workloads running inside virtual machines. And since this is something VKernel cannot do (yet), it decided to incorrectly use the term "application virtual machines", which refers to a virtual machine hosting an application, not an entire operating system workload as is the case with hardware virtualization.

The big question is why would someone want to get performance metrics on 5 of their VMs (AppVIEW limit) when they can get performance metrics on all VMs using tools provided by virtualization vendors?!

In contrast, what VKernel claims it can do, is exactly what Lanamark does today - provides a unified view of applications, users, workloads and the underlying IT (both physical and virtual) infrastructure.

On March 24, 2010, Lanamark announced Lanamark Suite 2010. The new version unifies analysis of applications, users, workloads and the underlying IT infrastructure. Here is a summary of new features:

• Lanamark Compatibility Pack for Microsoft Windows 7
• Lanamark Application Analysis Pack
• Lanamark User Analysis Pack

Many thanks to all customers and partners who pushed the boundaries of innovation at Lanamark and provided ongoing product feedback, reviews and field validation.

Lanamark announced a partnership with Oracle that will enable Oracle channel partners to leverage Lanamark Suite to design and deliver desktop and server virtualization solutions based on Oracle VM. Lanamark will be presenting at upcoming Oracle VM boot camps and created a calculator for comparing Oracle VM vs. VMware vSphere.

Lanamark Suite enables Oracle partners to accelerate design and delivery of Oracle VM virtualization solutions. Solution providers can gather vital information about x86/x64 and SPARC environments, identify most suitable candidates for virtualization, and then design complete, high-performance virtualization solutions with Oracle VM. Lanamark Suite supports application, middleware, database, operating system, server, storage and thin client components from Oracle and Oracle alliance partners.

Learn more about the partnership between Lanamark and Oracle. 

Today Lanamark announced availability of Lanamark Suite Managed Services Edition which enables IT consultants, managed service providers, system integrators and value-added resellers to offer subscription-based capacity management and optimization services. Here is a summary of the two editions:

Professional Services Edition

Lanamark Suite Professional Services Edition enables solution providers to deliver project-based assessment, planning and design services across desktops, servers and storage. It facilitates delivery of the following solutions and services:

• Application Delivery Planning
• Desktop Virtualization Planning
• Server Virtualization Planning
• Storage Optimization

Managed Services Edition

Lanamark Suite Managed Services Edition enables solution providers to deliver subscription-based capacity management and optimization services across physical and virtual infrastructure. It facilitates delivery of the following solutions and services:

• Capacity Management
• Hardware Lifecycle Management
• Continuous Server Consolidation
• Virtual Infrastructure Optimization
• Software Asset Management

Rather than resell complex capacity planning software such as Novell PlateSpin Recon, solution providers can instead deliver capacity planning and optimization as a service. This allows customers to focus on their core business rather than purchase expensive software and maintain in-house expertise for using it.

Scott Lowe recently did a feature comparison between Microsoft Hyper-V R2 and VMware vSphere. The comparison is definitely worth taking a look at. Here is a tabular summary of the comparison: