<p style="text-align: justify;">We haven&#8217;t even begun cleaning up the New Year&#8217;s confetti that we haven&#8217;t thrown yet, and already the media is loaded with predictions for the new year. It&#8217;s nice to see that some things never change; it&#8217;s even comforting, especially when facing a whole new years&#8217; worth of uncertainty.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">So, in the spirit of 2016 prognostications, why don&#8217;t we take a peek at what&#8217;s in store for VMWare in the coming year? It will be interesting to see how much of this actually comes to pass. If you&#8217;re really curious about that, feel free to bookmark this and revisit it same time, next year!</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">In any event, here we go &#8230;</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><b>VMWare Will Benefit From Citrix&#8217;s Mistakes</b></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The article &#8220;And the Crystal Ball Says &#8230; 4 VMware Predictions for 2016&#8221; tells us that a number of large companies intend on migrating off of Citrix Xen Desktop in favor of VMWare when the time comes for them to upgrade. The truth of the matter is, Citrix has made a series of missteps of late, and it&#8217;s on the strength of those errors that VMWare is benefiting. In other words, this anticipated migration isn&#8217;t so much a vote of confidence for VMWare as it is a statement of business&#8217; lack of confidence in Citrix.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><i>Cloud technology looms on VMWare&#8217;s horizon ominously, presaging dark days ahead/</i></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><b>The Cloud Will Keep Life Interesting</b></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The cloud lurks on the horizon like an ominous dark &#8230; um..cloud. Put simply, cloud computing is increasing in popularity, due in part to technology providing answers to concerns that may otherwise steer people away from using it (security comes to mind, for instance).</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Unfortunately, the cloud&#8217;s gain is VMWare&#8217;s loss, and there are already signs that the former has been chipping away at the latter&#8217;s market share. For example, SaaS is making significant inroads into what in the past would be considered VMware&#8217;s territory. VMWare will need to adapt and adjust, and fortunately, there are already signs that they&#8217;re doing so, precisely the move toward a hybrid approach. In fact &#8230;</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><b>Hybridization Will Be The Buzzword Of Choice</b></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">VMWare is moving towards a hybrid cloud model, which shows a willingness to embrace change and make the moves needed to remain relevant. On the upside, VMWare has a history of successfully bringing an element of simplicity to the IT world, and that&#8217;s what an increasing number of companies want today: simplicity. On the other hand, the largest providers out there don&#8217;t have a history of running a cloud environment on VMWare, and that&#8217;s not likely to change.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The hybrid approach is a good one, but it&#8217;s just one step in a long process to remain competitive and current. VMWare simply isn&#8217;t as sexy and relevant as many of today&#8217;s cloud solutions. It looks like VMWare has its work cut out for them.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><b>VMWare Licensing Will See Its Dominance Fade</b></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">It&#8217;s easy to be the popular choice when you&#8217;re the only game in town, and for years, VMWare licensing ruled supreme despite its price tag because it was the only software available that did everything a business required. Now with the advent of products such as Microsoft&#8217;s Hyper-V, there&#8217;s a choice and a less expensive one at that. If the situation remains unchanged, this will result in headaches for VMWare.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">VMWare will bear close watching in the new year. It will be interesting to see what happens when the irresistible force of the cloud fully collides with the immovable VMWare object.</p>

Where Is VMware Headed?
