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bruienne
Contributor
Contributor

Future of Fusion after team layoff?

Given the layoff of the entire Fusion development group (VMware Layoffs Hit Monday - Fortune and also Entire Workstation and Fusion groups gone - post regarding VMware Inc. layoffs what is the official line on future support for Fusion? Are we going to see a version 9 or should we be making other plans? Quite a few customers have existing investments in Fusion and it will require planning to shift focus to other solutions.

12 Replies
wila
Immortal
Immortal

Hi,

VMware employees are not allowed to comment on future plans so am very doubtful you will get an official answer at the forums.

It will have to be a public statement instead. Pretty sure the product will be supported until at least the EOL date (2017/02/25), but difficult to make other statements.

FWIW, I hijacked an older thread from December about future plans, where there's a few other replies on the topic:

Re: Fusion's Future

As in December we were still asked about what we wanted to see in newer versions of the product, it is pretty clear that this turn of events was very unexpected.

--
Wil

edit: I wrote a small blog post on the subject (The future of VMware Fusion and VMware Workstation - PlanetVM ) and will keep that updated with info as the time goes. It appears that TheRegister at least got some sort of official reply when asked about the future.

| Author of Vimalin. The virtual machine Backup app for VMware Fusion, VMware Workstation and Player |
| More info at vimalin.com | Twitter @wilva
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Woodmeister50
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

It will be a real shame to see this product go.  The alternative is that "other" company with

a ball and chain subscription model or a crippleware version (only licensed for one machine as

well) or an after thought project of Oracle with Virtual Box (never really sure how serious they

are about VMs for the desktop).

I had moved just this year to the Fusion product because of the "other" companies practices

which were becoming un-pallatable.

Will all desktop virtualization become extinct and only be the realm of server farms?

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ColoradoMarmot
Champion
Champion

To all the Fusion developers:  Thank you.  Simply put: you enabled corporate use of Macs. 

Without your early and tireless support, I wouldn't have been able to switch to OSX full time in 2006 - it's been a great 10 years.  I've been in your shoes, and it sucks.  Please let us know where you land, and best wishes.

P.S. Wonder how this impacts Fusions future too:  http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2016/01/26/clock-is-ticking-for-windows-7-windows-8-1-on-new-pcs-as-micr...

SvenGus
Expert
Expert

‌A potentially interesting alternative, in the future (now it's too basic), could also be this one, which uses the built-in OS X hypervisor framework:

Veertu

But let's really hope that VMware Fusion will continue to be developed, too...

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wila
Immortal
Immortal

There's also xhyve, virtual box, parallells...

Nice to have alternatives, but personally I'd prefer VMware Fusion.

--

Wil

| Author of Vimalin. The virtual machine Backup app for VMware Fusion, VMware Workstation and Player |
| More info at vimalin.com | Twitter @wilva
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Woodmeister50
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

It does look interesting.  However for me the lack of USB support makes it useless (need to

connect Windows only devices like emulators, debug pods, USB based Oscopes, FPGA

programmers, etc.).  However, for those only interested in running the likes of Office,

Quicken, etc., it would be quite viable.

Fusion and that "other company" are the only ones that can reliably run my devices I need.

Really don't want to go back to "that other company" as there latests policies and direction

created a bad taste which prompted me to move to Fusion.

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koi
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I'm sadly pessimistic about Fusion's future. I'm sure VMware will be happy to continue to wring money out of people, and I doubt Fusion will go away overnight, but it's hard for me to imagine a world where Fusion doesn't bitrot. Fusion and Workstation have been understaffed for years, and upper management has never been interested in fixing this. I actually do sort of believe the official line that VMware will continue to be invested in Fusion as much as it's always been, but that's not a good thing.

It takes months to really come up to speed on a codebase that's any appreciable size, and that's under normal circumstances with one new hire and a team of experienced people to mentor them. In this case, there was no attempt to retain talent (if anything, the opposite was true) and an entire new team is expected to learn Fusion's code base. Can they make something work? Probably. Is it going to have (more than usual) errors, regressions, and inconsistencies? I'd bet on it.

No disrespect to the new team - I have no idea who they are, they could be superstars, I don't know. But throwing away 2 entire teams of experienced developers with no notice and no massive new investment in their replacement is not a recipe for success.

My gracious side (or maybe the part that still has a sentimental handful of shares of VMW) wishes VMware luck. My spiteful side is just waiting for them to fail. All of me is sad that this happened to the best team I've known, and in such a tasteless and insensitive way.

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Woodmeister50
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Some significant remarks in this article lead me to believe that Fusion and Workstation days

are numbered: VMware axes Fusion and Workstation US devs • The Register.

Time to start looking to alternatives so as to be prepared for when the curtain finally falls.

The very unfortunate thing is that the only company that is truly a viable alternative for

serious users is one with ball and chain products and abysmal customer support.

Personally, if I didn't want a product group in my business anymore, I would spin it off

or outright sell it.  Then again, there are probably some core technologies in Fusion/

Workstation products that VMware would not want to let out of house.

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ColoradoMarmot
Champion
Champion

VMWare's stated publicly that neither product is going away - there is a product roadmap and plans for the future.  This is the typical (unfortunate) offshoring of development that's rampant in IT these days.

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SvenGus
Expert
Expert

‌Yes, of course USB support (and other advanced features) is a must, for an evolved virtualization program: but it looks like we'll have to wait for Apple to implement this in their framework (otherwise, Fusion and other virtualizers could as well already have switched to use the Apple hypervisor, in order to simplify things)...

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mopcodes
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I'm not excited about Parallels - which is what everyone seems to want to not name on here. The product was okay, but the changes in licensing and the number of installs limited to one was what really sucked. Crossover - ha ha ha ha.

Anyhow if this product goes then so goes me running Windows on my Mac. Period. Done. Bye bye.

Workstation and Fusion were my go to products. If they are truly dead then I don't need them or Windows any more....I won't buy a PC.

Woodmeister50
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I'm not excited about Parallels - which is what everyone seems to want to not name on here. The product was okay, but the changes in licensing and the number of installs limited to one was what really sucked. Crossover - ha ha ha ha.

Anyhow if this product goes then so goes me running Windows on my Mac. Period. Done. Bye bye.

Workstation and Fusion were my go to products. If they are truly dead then I don't need them or Windows any more....I won't buy a PC.

On the Mac anyway, there is always the Bootcamp option which costs nothing and has

little or no hardware issues as would some of the alternative virtualization products.  Then again, there

is the inconvenience of dual booting.

It has been stated that VMware is not giving up on the products and there is a roadmap.

Well, a move such has been made, at least near term is a roadmap leading to a cliff.

Until a new group gets up to speed on the product and the customer base, don't expect bug updates

and do expect any new upgrades to be full of issues due to the lack of knowledge and experience.