[Disclosure: I worked at VMware from 2002 through 2011.] I take issue with the claim that the competition "quickly followed" on for (at the least) the transpar

[Disclosure: I worked at VMware from 2002 through 2011.] I take issue with the claim that the competition "quickly followed" on for (at the least) the transparent page sharing feature. VMware was shipping transparent page sharing in their type 1 hypervisor since ESX 1.5, which was released before I joined the company. KSM was first proposed in 2008, and I believe it didn't actually ship until 2009 (note: the delay was at least in part because the developers wanted to avoid the possibility of exposure to patent litigation since VMware held a patent on the technology, software patents are evil, blah blah). You can tell a similar story for VMotion/live migration of running virtual machines; VMware first shipped it in 2003 and it was at least 2007 before any competing hypervisors were shipping a similar feature (Hyper-V didn't have it until 2008 R2, Xen had it sooner - possibly in 2007?).