An interesting ‘Virtualization market match’ is going on between Vmware & Microsoft. And its giving administrators lots of benefits and freebies too! Vmware is aggressively defending its virtualisation patch: Even though it is the undisputed virtualization leader, Vmware, in a brilliant move to preempt Vista, released the free Vmware player: 1-0. Microsoft responded by including the Windows license with virtual machines on Windows Server Enterprise: 1-1. Vmware released GSX server for free (brilliant product, this counts for 2 goals ) 3-1. Microsoft responded by giving away its virtualization software for free: 3-2. And the latest news is that Vmware has opened up the Vmware vm format, so that developers can develop for it. 4-2. Will Microsoft make another move, or is it time they acknowledge defeat?