Microsoft is working to get a toehold in the enterprise 
market at VMware's expense. On Tuesday in a blog post, the software giant took a few jabs at VMware's revised pricing strategy.
VMware announced a new pricing model when it released vSphere 5 in July. The pricing drew the ire of customers. VMware has since made adjustments and worked to better explain those changes in the wake of the customer backlash. But Microsoft isn't letting it slide.
In a blog post entitled Beware the VMware Memory vTax Part 2, Microsoft picked up where it left off with its attacks on the dominant player in the virtualization market. Jeff Woolsey of the Windows server and cloud team posted a lengthy argument in an attempt to leverage VMware customer discontent.
VMware's Marketing Spin
"While VMware is delivering their best marketing spin to the situation, claiming they are 'customer focused,' trumpeting 'they listened,' and hoping that the furor will die down, VMware is continuing to misjudge the situation and engage in selective listening with their customers," Woolsey wrote. "Even after modifying the vSphere 5.0 memory entitlements, the fundamental tax on memory still exists, which is an anathema to customers, and VMware is still receiving colorful feedback from their customers."
Woolsey pointed to a Twitter outcry with tweets carrying the #vtax hashtag, as well as industry reaction in technology news articles. Woolsey also noted negative customer comments in VMware's community forums before comparing the new pricing strategy to what Hyper-V has to offer. His conclusion: Hyper-V is customer-driven and free.
Hyper-V Lags Behind
Of course, there are challenges any time a vendor changes its traditional pricing scheme. Companies run into problems unless they actively discuss why the new pricing is better than the old model, said Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT , and many users were extremely confused by the new pricing.
"To its credit, VMware has improved the explanation and made some changes that make the new model more attractive, but this still created a competitive opportunity for Microsoft," King said. "It doesn't surprise me that the company is trying to make the most of it even if they aren't being entirely straightforward."
King recalled how Microsoft went to market with Hyper-V with a competitive message against VMware and plans to become the leading virtualization platform for x86. But it hasn't happened. VMware is estimated to have an 80 percent market share. By contrast, Hyper-V has been on the market for more than three years and hasn't gained much traction even though its solution is free.
"While usage of Hyper-V has increased, it hasn't displaced VMware. You see a lot of companies that are using both solutions together, but I haven't seen very many examples of sizable companies that have basically ripped VMware out and replaced it with Hyper-V," King said. "Those types of competitive migration example are very few and far between."
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