Can Microsoft’s Plays Out-Wit VMware?
The annals of tech marketing teach us it’s not necessarily the company with the best product or vision that comes to define a category, but the company that runs the best plays.
In 2011, we’re watching IT-history repeat itself yet again. This time, the battlefield is the virtualization marketplace, and the dominant player is vmware. The virtualization vanguard is fending off attacks by Microsoft, Citrix, and Salesforce.com, all which want to redefine vmware’s lucrative and ever-expanding market.
So whose vision will win out? It’s too early to tell, but IT-history gives some hints:
- In the 1980s, Oracle bested IBM’s database dominance with Challenges and Call Outs. Big Red created a B2B referendum on Big Blue’s proprietary databases (which Oracle ported to non-IBM platforms). The then-startup out-played the then-behemoth.
- More recently, Salesforce.com has been running Call Outs and Baits on SAP in the media. It’s used the stodgy German company as a personal punching bag to gain acceptance for the SaaS-delivery model. It’s plays are beating a flat-footed incumbent.
At the moment, Microsoft is positioning virtualization as an operating system feature, rather than a standalone technology. It’s mostly played nice so far, relying on framing plays to tell its story. But as it and other well-resourced companies mobilize their marketing and PR teams, they’ll move rightward on The Standard Table. It will be entertaining (albeit predictable) gamesmanship to observe.
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