'Come on if you think you're hard enough'

VMware has come out fighting against Oracle's release of its own virtualisation suite.

The company called Oracle VM unproven and said it lacked many of the features of its own software. It also pointed out that it already runs more Oracle applications on its virtualisation software than any other virtualisation supplier.

"Oracle's introduction of yet another variant of Xen is clearly a response to the significant virtualization industry that VMware has established," said Parag Patel, vice president of Alliances at VMware

"The offering does not address the capabilities required to achieve the cost savings and IT simplification that customers are realizing everyday from VMware's Virtual Infrastructure. It is also an unproven offering and lacks features that VMware customers value and view as key to a virtualization deployment, including high availability, integration with third-party backup software and extensive hardware certifications."

He continued that in the last six years his company had certified almost 2000 different hardware models and 30 guest operating systems. Nearly half of VMware's customers had a "VMware First" policy he continued.

However a full scale war between the two companies looks unlikely, with VMware pledging to work closely with Oracle to ensure software compatibility in the future.

Yesterday's announcement by Oracle sparked a sell off of VMware shares from nervous investors. The share price fell by over 10 per cent yesterday, although it has recovered today.