I really have to wonder MS with all their resources? They have very good people in development so that can't be the problem, why so late? It will get interesting, now MS doesn't have to fight just VM but get to all these hardware vendors after the fact. And they must offer something better than VM if they want to stay in game. Not easy, these are business systems and not home servers. They will run many other OS's than just Windows and all the management problems it creates. MS is enhancing Windows management to more standards based but how long will that take? And will it be really interoperable with existing infrastructure management systems? Too many questions still - interesting times coming!

>>> What’s more significant is the fact that leading server makers have decided to bed down with VMware rather than await Microsoft’s delayed Hyper-V, which is expected to land within the next 180 days.

I don't see what is so big about this news and I don't see how it hurts microsoft. Customers that still want to use ESX equivalent virtualization at no additional cost will simply deploy Windows Server 2008 to the hardware. What am I missing?