So the new Microsoft whore is the Yankee Group. Spineless PR shills that have absolutely no interest in the truth, just in getting money for spin.
It is really sad to see a group of people publicly sell their souls for peanuts.
Up to now I didn't know anything about the Yankee Group, so I cannot comment on how serious they were or how good their reporting was, but I know now that they have zero credibility and do not report facts or anything resembling the truth.
Too bad for them.
Microsoft, on the other hand, is a veteran of this kind of practice. Microsoft has already destroyed the credibility of a number of so-called "think tank" institutes. Looks like the other De Tocquevilles decided they'd had enough of being ridiculed and left it to the new kid on the block.
Because I cannot imagine that any Institute with a reputation would sign a paper that contains only counter-truths and spin.
The Yankee Group is going to learn the hard way why Microsoft does not publish such shite under its own name.

Didio, commonly known as the didiot has a great track record of being abjectly wrong. She was a staunch supporter of SCOX + M$ against FOSS, and look where that went.

At least she's consistent - at being totally wrong, and fawning over M$, who appear to have her bought and paid for. Her opinions are usually valueless, and she has no technical credibility whatsoever.

... for VMWare's response. Try this one instead:

http://blogs.vmware.com/virtualreality/2008/02/those-darn-de-1.html

PH writes: Fixed, thanks Ray

I evaluated all the virtualization platofrms. Performance between Xen and VMware were tops running a mixture of Windows and Linux guests, the rest were all pants. What sets VMWare above Xen (and all the rest) is its management tools. It is literally head and shoulders above all the rest. Actually, that's not even fair to VMWare. Their stuff just works better. The cost per socket dissappears in less than a month when you consider that you can provision a whole mess of servers, enough to constitute a datacenter, in less than a week! Doing this with Xen or any other platform is a joke.

I don't work for VMWare, don't have stock in EMC either. I'm just a tech weasel that has had my workload cut in half, I look like a star with my budget, and I'm able to produce like a team of IT consultants.

If you are doing apples to apples, try comparing VMWare server to Xen. Both are free, and you'll find quickly that the core products are pretty compariable. Throw in ESX on bare metal, VC, HA, DRS, etc,,, Xen falls away pretty quickly.