The November 2008 issue of Redmond magzine, the independent voice for the Microsoft IT community and formerly known as Microsoft Certified Professional Magazine, is bubbling over with VMWare virtualization news this month.  They have announced the 2008 Reader’s Choice Awards Triple Crown achievers.  The prestigious Triple Crown award is described by Redmond as follows:

“To recognize the dynasties in our annual Readers’ Choice competition, Redmond is introducing the “Triple Crown,” a new award for products that have won (at least) three Readers’ Choice honors in a row.”

VMware GSX Server (retired but replaced by the free VMware Server) won the Triple Crown in the “Best Virtual Server Product” category as well as taking “ISV Winner” honors.  Redmond goes on to explain GSX easily won over Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 which was the only other product in the category.  No surprises there.  Like today’s comparison of VMware ESX and ESXi to Microsoft Hyper-V, GSX Server was years ahead of Microsoft in terms of development.

VMware Workstation dominated the more competitive “Best Virtual PC Product” field (5 products) and, like VMware GSX Server, was also named “ISV Winner”.  Microsoft Virtual PC for Windows, a technology Microsoft bought its way into by purchasing from Connectix in February 2003 along with Virtual Server, was honorably mentioned as a runner up.  Microsoft came to the realization that the product they had been developing was not capable and started over from scratch.  VMware’s latest Workstation 6.5 offering is sure to continue embarrassing the competition with features like Unity and enhanced record and reply technology.

Read more about Redmond’s virtualization category and other categories here.

The same issue also contains three other VMware related articles:

1. “Maritz:  VMware’s Answer to Microsoft?”  An interview with VMware CEO Paul Maritz whom they labeled “The Microsoft Menace” on the issue’s cover.
2. “VMware Wants It All” Editor In Chief Doug Barney talks about VMware’s future technology announcements and contemplates how they will fit together and will they work?
3. “Cisco and VMware Collaborate on Next-Gen Data Center” The companies’ new products could change the virtualization game.

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