VMware has made a big deal about their Memory Overcommit feature as a competitive advantage for scalability and total cost of ownership. They do what many vendors do - create Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD) in the market to beat their competition. And like many engineering-driven companies they do this by focusing on some esoteric technical capability that can't be proven one way or another to have any real or broad applicability.

VMware claims they need less memory on physical servers to run the same or more virtual servers than their competition - including Virtual Iron. And since they can use less memory - or so they claim - then the overall cost is less because people are spending less money on memory. For example, you can buy 2 GB versus 4 GB of RAM for your servers.

You have got to be kidding? The price difference between 2 GB and 4 GB is between $100 and $250. And that is what they are hanging their hat on?

First, the impact on TCO is absurd. It may be a good feature - I don't personally know - but saving $100-$250 does not make up for the big price tag on their software licenses and maintenance.

Second, there is no real way to prove that they can run more virtual servers than their competitors unless you put these solutions in the same exact production environments. And even then there are so many variables that finding relevancy is extremely difficult. Vendor benchmarks don't count because you can make these look anyway you want.

For SME companies - getting lost in the weeds around memory overcommit is ridiculous. And it is evidence that when vendors try to be all things to all people they are going to be disadvantaged regardless of how much revenue they have or how big they are. This topic is the wrong conversation to have and that goes double for the SME.

I think we should all take Thoreau's advice - Simplify, simplify, simplify. Provide great products, support and an overall experience between the customers, the partners and the vendors. Having a stupid technical argument about something that is moot, esoteric and fundamentally can't be proved is - well - stupid.