Bolstered by the June launch of its Hyper-V virtualization software, Microsoft Corp. grabbed nearly a quarter of the fast-growing x86 server virtualization market in the second quarter, market research firm IDC said on Thursday.
The success cut VMware Inc.'s global share to less than twice its own. Counting by license shipments, the company had 44% of the Q2 market with its VMware ESX and VMware Server products, IDC said.
But, IDC analyst Brett Waldman said in an e-mail, "VMware's virtualized license share is likely to decrease in the long run [as Hyper-V continues to] grow and take share from both [Microsoft's] Virtual Server 2005 and VMware."