There was something in the air before the US woke up:

http://virtualization.com/news/2008/07/08/emc-vmware-spinout/

Our take on Diane Greene’s departure:

http://virtualization.com/news/2008/07/08/diane-greene-vmware-paul-maritz/

MS releases WS2k7 with Hyper-V to manufacturing around the same time Ms Greene departs and Paul Maritz (ex-MS), now VMware CEO...

Market sentiment/impact: depends on what Paul M has to say as to which way the company will be going under his leadership. Early adopters are probably dead happy with VMware, from functionality and maybe 'its not MS' points of view...

Hyper-V arriving embeds virtualisation in the MS furniture... future suggests you get it anyway even it you may not want or need it. Added complexity may put some off it for now, re:support, but tools are always being developed.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=1458

Interesting times ahead...

Now it's possible to hate VMware just as easily as Oracle and M$. Kicking out a successful co-founder and one of the very few women leading a tech company just because sales will fall "modestly below" earlier predictions of 50 per cent growth is stupid.

Hope she comes back Steve Jobs-style (but maybe not the mock turtle-neck please) in a few years and lays waste to the people who forced her out.

There are now open-source virtualisation alternatives, should VMware now abandon its former commitment to software that is both quite outstandingly good and operating-system neutral.

Hoping this won't happen, but if the new CEO brings the MS definition of quality with him, methinks those open-source alternatives will rapidly gain traction.