The famous words "nobody puts baby in a corner" come to mind. Yes, it is true that this year the two major competitors to EMC's VMWare subsidiary are each being relegated to a 10-by-10 booth space at this week's VMworld show put on by VMware. If you have ever exhibited a product before, you know that is barely enough room for a small company, much less a Microsoft or Citrix. Put simply, it's their show, it's not an industry show, and they set the rules. The rules say "complementary products" are allowed, but apparently not competitive products. Microsoft and Citrix will not even be able to demo their products at their booths.

But will that shoehorned space and the restrictive presentation rules dampen the momentum toward Microsoft's Hyper-V? It isn't likely, although virtualization front-runner VMware's putting its competitors into tiny booths and restricting what they can show does seem a bit childish.

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In all fairness, VMware is not the only company that has been childish at VMworld. Last year, even though Microsoft has been a gold sponsor at previous VMWare events, its staff handed out poker chips at the Microsoft booth printed with negative comments about VMWare. Childish behavior apparently begets childish behavior.

Microsoft isn't taking this year's restrictions lying down, though. Its people are at the show talking to customers, and the company put out a press release sure to displease VMware by showing how much money companies save by moving from VMWare to Microsoft virtualization.

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