“Everybody has a hypervisor today and everybody gives it away for free,” Maritz continued. “What it’s all about are the automation layers on top of it,” and extending the benefits of virtualization from servers to the entire network.

How is VMware achieving that? The company today explained it wants to make “virtual data center” a phrase just as commonly uttered as virtual machines. Instead of merely virtualizing CPU capacity, a virtual data center brings CPU, storage, network services, security, load balancing, and other characteristics together into a single profile that can be easily reproduced and provisioned.

via As Microsoft gains, VMware insists that it maintains the upper hand | Ars Technica.