In the last years, in the virtualization ecosystem, there where three big trends:
- one is the shifting from a single hypervisor to a multi-hypervisors (originally was mainly a VMware ecosystem, now is a virtualization ecosystem)
- the second is the reduction of the number of players, at least in some fields like backup e monitoring, due to some acquisitions (for example Quest has bought VizionCore and VKernel… Novell has bought Platespin…)
- the third is that the big vendors are directly involved and in competition: for example VMware is working on some solutions, like VDR for backup (although is a limited solution) or vCenter Operations Management for monitoring… Big historical backup vendors have deployed solution for the virtual environment… Yesterday Dell has announce the intend to acquire Quest Software…
So could be natural (but not necessary correct) think that the virtualization ecosystem could not survive in the future and will become a part of the main existing vendors.
Seems not, or not so faster… Apart the backup and monitoring area, there is still a “big” virtualization ecosystem on more specific (and in most case also single hypervisor) areas like VDI (for example Liquidware) and security (for example there are interesting tools for data encryption). And also in the backup area some players are still there, like Veeam and PHD Virtual…