SWsoft’s CEO, Serguei Beloussov, told Computer Business Review that although the company remains convinced that the operating system virtualization approach provided with its Virtuozzo product remains the most efficient, it saw some time ago that the hardware-based virtualization offered by Parallels was likely to grow in popularity.
Intel and AMD have done a tremendous job of introducing hardware virtualization into the processor, said Herndon, Virginia-based. When the opportunity came along we had to take it. It is a good product and a good group of people.
Beloussov also revealed that Intel Corp’s part alongside Insight Venture Partners and Bessemer Venture Partners in SWsoft’s June 2005 $12.4m in funding round was strongly-linked to Parallels’ potential. That’s actually one of the main reasons why Intel invested in SWsoft, he said.
While it is now understandable why the Herndon, Virginia-based company would want to hedge its bets by investing in an alternative approach to virtualization, Beloussov said the company had not made the acquisition public in order to avoid early confusion.
The problem with this kind of technology is that it takes a long time to get the technology beyond the initial hurdle, he said, noting that Parallels has already been working on its technology for five years. From the beginning we though when Parallels reaches a maturity level, then we could announce it, he said.
That level of maturity was originally going to be the release of Parallels’ first server products later this year, but with SWsoft having announced last year its intention to provide management tools for both hardware- and OS-virtualization, the potential for confusion has dissipated.
By now for our channel it has become clear that the technologies are complimentary, said Beloussov. In the long run what we intend to do is integrate them. There is not really one approach that is better.
While integration is an aim, Beloussov admitted that it could be some way off. At this point we intend to keep them separate and target them at different markets, but it has potential.
Either way, SWsoft’s future lies in providing management capabilities on top of the virtualization technologies, said Beloussov. The main value of our company is not really in virtualization, it is in the management tools and automation, he said.
We could probably give out the Windows and Linux versions of Virtuozzo for free and it would not lose us revenue, it would probably increase our revenue, he added, before noting that we don’t intend to do that, I’m just saying we could do that.
