VMware Workstation blew my mind when I saw it demoed in (I think) mid-2000 [1]. I genuinely couldn't believe what I was seeing - it seemed that revolutionary, running an OS inside an OS on a desktop. I wonder whether VMware's problem nowadays is that, having basically invented the technology, they've become almost synonymous with the category of virtualisation tech - kind of like "Hoover" for home appliances - and their other products get less attention.
(I know that VMware didn't invent the idea of virtual machines. But my perception is that at that time, virtualised OSs were mostly found in mainframes.)
When people think of virtualisation, they think VMware as a key player in building and pushing the technology.
Like when you think of the first smartphone you think of the Apple iPhone, despite there being "smartphones" prior to its release.
IBM, actually, on mainframes.
Yes, I noted that in my post. I guess I meant general purpose virtualisation running on general purpose, commodity hardware.
Back in the late 80s spent 18 months in a role where I was developing scientific software on an IBM System/36 under VM/CMS. While this system actually had a hypervisor (CP) running on the physical hardware, and itself running virtualised instances of the CMS OS, it never felt (in hindsight) like I was in a virtualised environment. It seemed more like being logged into a multi-user unix box where everything ran in the same kernel - perhaps because the mainframe virtualisation layer was completely invisible to me, and everyone on the mainframe saw the same OS.
But point taken.
That's called emulation. That's not what VMWare does.
> I genuinely couldn't believe what I was seeing - it seemed that revolutionary, running an OS inside an OS on a desktop
SoftPC was in fact “running an OS inside an OS on the desktop “
The vast majority of why people are VMware proponents is down to their virtualisation software. It's why we were big resellers for a while. But for the last few years, their own sales people have only wanted to talk about security products, quite plainly acknowledging stagnant growth in on premise virtualisation.
But virtualisation is in my view the only place they've made it big. You've just linked a Reddit post in /r/cybersecurity talking about security products and every reply is about how to replace ESXi. It'll be interesting to see how their future pans out.