The Client Hypervisor Hardware Compatibility Challenge

It was good fun winding down 2009 with a spirited debate over on BrianMadden.com about the future prospects of type-1 client hypervisor technology. A topic that came up that I feel warrants a bit more commentary is hardware compatibility for client hypervisors.

As I look back in the rearview mirror at two-plus years of talking with IT professionals and industry analysts about client hypervisor technology, hardware compatibility is by far the topic that has generated the most questions. It isn't all that surprising, since it is in fact one of the biggest challenges that comes with bringing bare-metal hypervisor technology from the datacenter to the PC. There is critical functionality on end-user PCs that server hypervisors never needed to deal with, such as high performance graphics, wireless, power management, USB peripherals, laptop lid closure events, etc.

If I look outward at the rest of the industry, I see two reactions to this challenge. The reaction among other desktop virtualization startups was to punt on the hypervisor. Implementing a bare-metal client hypervisor is hard, especially for a startup with a finite set of resources. It is much easier to focus efforts elsewhere and in full hand-waving mode say, "Type-1 client hypervisors will eventually be a ubiquitous commodity." As it happens, this is probably true. However, it is not the case today, it definitely won't be the case in 2010, and who can say with 100 percent certainty when (or if) it will ever be the case? I'd probably bet a hundred bucks on it but certainly not millions in venture capital. For startups, there is certainly risk in spreading yourself too thin, but there is greater risk in not being in control of your own destiny. There is further risk in not being in control of the end-user experience, since that will ultimately make or break the success of client-side virtualization more than any other factor.

The incumbent desktop virtualization players followed a different approach. They are tackling the client hypervisor but zeroing in on a very small hardware compatibility list. They already have a captive audience (and revenue stream) with their server virtualization and server-hosted desktop virtualization products, so the bar for them is simply to show enough forward progress with client hypervisors to freeze their customers. This worked for a while in 2009, but we saw the freeze start to thaw when the major virtualization players laid a collective client hypervisor goose egg at VMworld 2009. VMware shops that had told us "looks great, but we're gonna wait to see CVP" came calling again in September. We are seeing the thaw turn into a full melt now that the "late 2009" client hypervisor target the big guys communicated has come and gone. This won't last forever, but we are certainly not going to let the window of opportunity we have in early 2010 pass without capitalizing.

I won't claim that we have achieved universal hardware compatibility with every PC on the planet, but I do believe that through a combination of a superior client hypervisor architecture, hard work, and close collaboration with key PC manufacturers, we are the undisputed leader in client hypervisor hardware compatibility. In my next post, I will provide a detailed explanation of why this is the case.