[Info-vax] Rumor of EMC shopping itself to hp

[Paul Sture]

On 2014-09-25, glen herrmannsfeldt <gah at ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote:
> Kerry Main <kerry.main at backtothefutureit.com> wrote:
>
> (snip)
>
>> Interesting item - since I believe VMware is a somewhat arm's length 
>> subsidiary of EMC, what would a merger this do to that part of the 
>> business?
>  
>> I expect VMware would likely be spun-off as a separate company to
>> reduce the overall cost, but?

I recall quite a hoohah about VMware price increases IIRC about this time
last year.  I don't know what happened across the rest of the product
range but having bought VMware Fusion 5 for my Mac in August 2013, the
pricing for an upgrade to Fusion 6 shortly afterwards left me distinctly
unimpressed, so I ignored it.

However a couple of weeks ago I discovered that VMware are offering a
couple of things:

1. More sensible upgrade prices are currently on offer for users of
   Fusion 5 and 6 upgrading to Fusion 7, also to the Pro edition.
2. One Fusion license covers multiple machines for a single user.

Having more than 1 Mac myself, I decided that the upgrade was worth it,
and bit. This time last year the prices were simply too high for me to
bite; presumably VMware discovered that their prices were hurting sales.

> And there is also VirtualBox, free and from Oracle.

But the VirtualBox Extensions Pack (USB 2.0 and VirtualBox RDP plus
a couple of other bits) isn't free if you want to roll it out
automatically, as you would probably want to do in an enterprise.

I've caught what I think the essential points are here:

<http://www.sture.ch/node/221#comment-21>

Note that support comes on top "at standard Oracle support pricing rates".
Scroll to the top of that page for the other Extension Pack specifics.

-- 
$ exit 13492
%SYSTEM-F-GAMEOVER, all your base are belong to us