VMware still predicting the end of Windows

In a recent iTWire posting, VMware executive Paul Harapin, managing director for Australia and New Zealand, predicted that large commercial operating systems like Windows will cease to exist within five to ten years. Instead, Harapin believes that there will only be very thin open-source operating systems supporting virtual appliances.

We’ve heard similar claims or predictions made in the past. And many of those predictions came from other VMware executives when talking about the end of Windows. We’ve also been told for many years that Linux would kill Windows. Even today, Apple hardware is making a big comeback, and it too was supposed to kill Windows many years ago.

But this prediction goes a bit deeper than the anti-Microsoft sentiment that usually gets bubbled up when talking about operating system death and operating system wars. Harapin seems to be talking about all monolithic operating systems going by the wayside, including but not limited to Windows. And he makes virtual appliances or virtual black boxes appear to be the silver bullet.

In the article, he also makes the claim that Windows and other large operating systems are already starting to be replaced by virtual appliances running on thin layers of Linux — another bold statement. VMware launched its virtual appliances concept back in February of 2006. It also created a Virtual Appliance Marketplace where people could promote their appliances to the community. In that two-and-a-half-year time span, the number of virtual appliances has definitely increased, but I haven’t seen a lot of data that supports the notion that these appliances have made any significant change to how people use larger operating systems.

Harapin also seems to believe that the death of the OS prediction travels across both the business and consumer markets. In either market, it will take a lot of education and convincing on VMware’s part to change decades of traditional computing methodologies. They are still trying to convince people to simply use server virtualization in a production environment; how difficult will it be to convince someone to give up control of their environment to a black box? Sure, a handful of these types of environments such as Cisco devices are one thing, but doing that for all of their applications? What about software that doesn’t play well in a virtual environment? Whether it is heavy I/O enterprise applications or rich 3D gaming in the home?

And then, what about all that money that VMware shelled out when it acquired Thinstall and its application virtualization technology? What about all the time and effort the company has been putting into VMware ThinApp 4.0? How does the idea of application virtualization and streaming fit within this concept of killing off monolithic operating systems? Where does VMware’s new product fit within this world of virtual appliances only — a world where the operating system is obsolete?

Don’t get me wrong, I believe virtual appliances have a place in this world. I myself have used them in the past to get something up and running quickly. And I’ve been drinking the Kool-Aid about virtualization a lot longer than most people. I’m just not ready to join Harapin on the leap of operating system death.