Oracle Kills Virtual Iron 189
rhathar writes in with news that Oracle is killing off the products of Virtual Iron, a month after purchasing the company. Reports say that all but 10 to 15 staff were let go. The Reg article speculates that Oracle bought VI for its technology and considers its customers and partners expendable. When the Sun purchase finalizes, Oracle will be in possession of three separate virtualization technologies all based on Xen. "In a letter to Virtual Iron's sales partners, Oracle says it 'will suspend development of existing Virtual Iron products and will suspend delivery of orders to new customers.' One partner said, 'So basically, anyone that built their hosting infrastructure on VI... is now totally in the s–.'"
Re:Totally in the s--? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Another reason why VMWare is the... (Score:2, Insightful)
Come talk to me in 5 years when your viable long term solution providers have decided that their product line is not profitable enough and kill it off. That is what happens when a company's products are not a one-trick pony.
Re:Oracle is not IBM. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is not a fair product comparison: OS2 vs VI's end of life. Both companies buy product, in some cases to integrate, others to remove competition, and others yet again to just own the customer base. Expect the same careful moves when the database gets put down someday.
I'm willing to bet it will play out more along these lines... For existing customer who already own the product, Oracle will support them for as long as they are willing to pay for support. For those who did not buy yet - sorry, no product can be bought anymore. For previous partners, a tough break. Continue to sell services to existing customers, but don't plan for any new customers. Now would be a very good time to rethink product - any of the other VM products - and see if there might be a reasonable match to what they were doing.
Re:Don't forget VirtualBox (Score:1, Insightful)
VirtualBox is really for the desktop... or developing VMs for the enterprise, which is where I hope they go with it. I really like VirtualBox. It's free, does everything I need it to do and has replaced my use of VMWare Workstation nicely. If VMWare Workstation were free, I'd switch back.
Well it's free for now at least...
Purpose of open software (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a good example of the purpose for requiring that you have access to and can compile the source code to the software you're using. If the current developer decides to close shop or has it closed for them as in this case, you can just take ths code to another developer or set up a new shop, rather than be totally screwed like this.
Re:Yet another IT company gets to live my dream! (Score:3, Insightful)
It'd be great if by the time you were able to sell out you weren't in bed with the devil already. It's hard to grow any company without bringing in some sort of wealthy partner or group of investors. The reason why most new businesses fail within 5 years, even those that have a good product or service, is undercapitalization. Once you bring in the money the rules change drastically.
The fortunate entrepreneurs that are successful the first go around and have it in them to self fund another company are very rare. Being altruistic and very successful in business don't often seem to go hand in hand. Although from my experience the honest geeks actually make decent deals like you say, often times screwed up by the rest of the corporate world.
Re:They made the product even more virtual (Score:5, Insightful)
>The product allowed people to eliminate physical boxes and still run dozens or hundreds of logical servers.
For us, ESX is the difference between needing a new contract with our electical contractor (hundreds of thousands of dollars) versus working with our current power capabilities. It's not about the host machines, the licenses, or even the sysadmin workload. It's more about the power supplies and cooling the racks than anything else.
Re:Purpose of open software (Score:1, Insightful)
Oh, yes, I'll just take virtualization software source code and send it to another developer for fixes. I'm sure just any old development shop can handle that <rolls eyes>
The funniest part is that the OP was probably dead serious when he wrote that. If this is a "good example" of anything, it's an example of why having the source code doesn't buy ordinary people diddly squat.
Re:Yet another IT company gets to live my dream! (Score:5, Insightful)
This is OT, but needs to be said. My workaround for getting rid of that fucking annoying vertical and horizontal gray bars, and friend/foe circle icons, has now stopped working. It used to be that I could click any post in the story (i.e., "#28404197"), and then click the story link at the top of that page (i.e., "Oracle Kills Virtual Iron") to get back to the story with no disgusting graphics interrupting the flow of the beautiful words.
Now, that has stopped working as of this morning. So: fuck you, Slashdot. Burn in hell for all I care. I'll read you a lot less now than I used to. No, I'm not saying I'll stay away forever, but as soon as your continued idiotic refusal to fix basic layout bugs annoys me, I will stop reading. And that's about 5 or 6 posts into most stories.
If this is supposed to be an incentive to get me to try some other layout, FUCKING TELL ME! Don't just break shit and hope that I know how to "upgrade" to fix it.
Re:Yet another IT company gets to live my dream! (Score:3, Insightful)
create and issue a billion (or so) class B shares, and dilute everyone else's interest
How is this even legal? If you own 5% of the company, you own 5% of the company, and "diluting" that would be theft.
It's never, ever that simple.
There are virtually always multiple classes of shares issued. Also, they might only hold warrants or options rather than actual stock.
There could be anti-dilution or redemption rights attached, but if they (the employees) don't know to look for these things, there won't be.
Re:Totally in the s--? (Score:3, Insightful)
Citrix should be ALL over this.
Re:Yet another IT company gets to live my dream! (Score:2, Insightful)
This is OT, but needs to be said. My workaround for getting rid of that fucking annoying vertical and horizontal gray bars, and friend/foe circle icons, has now stopped working. And that's about 5 or 6 posts into most stories.
I guess no one explained that poor language is simply the lack of intelligence to think of meaningful words to express yourself. But to the adblocks, why does the person suggest we not watch the ads? We are getting all this for FREE - is it too much to give a little of our precious moments to read an ad. No wonder the head guys are so mean to the lower ranks, look at how we are behaving down here! A respectful but ashamed open source evangelist
Re:Purpose of open software (Score:3, Insightful)
The funniest part is that the OP was probably dead serious when he wrote that. If this is a "good example" of anything, it's an example of why having the source code doesn't buy ordinary people diddly squat.
So true! Years ago when I worked at a software house our CEO was paranoid about the source code... he wanted it locked away as he was afraid our "competitors" could get it. Now, there were a few problems with this. Our customers got the source code when they bought our system, since it needed to be compiled on their systems (as no two customers had the same configuration). Also, we didn't really have any competitors. Now, the joke is that even though our customers had the source, and the security blanket that should our company go down they could continue, the customers could do no more than compile the code. The real knowledge was locked in the heads of the programmers who knew HOW and WHY everything was put together in the source code... and, sadly, this is something that is still overlooked. The source isn't everything, but just part of it, and most people don't realize what the missing part is.