More than 60 percent of all applications run in virtualized environments, and yet the hypervisor is no longer at the center of attention. Wikibon Senior Analyst Stu Miniman explained why in a recent interview with SiliconAngle NewsDesk host Kristin Feledy.

In Miniman’s view, server virtualization has gone stale. Enterprise users are shifting their focus to OpenStack, cloud computing and other solutions that are shaping the data center of tomorrow. These technologies represent a major threat to VMware, which is diversifying into new segments as part of an effort to cling onto its dominant position in the marketplace.

The virtualization behemoth shelled out over a billion dollars for Nicira to gain a foothold in the SDN space, and recently pulled the curtains back on a Hadoop-enabled version of its hypervisor . Miniman says that the firm helped bring software-led infrastructure into the limelight, but notes that it has not yet put forward a coherent vision for the programmable data center. He adds that the same is true for IBM, Dell and Hewlett-Packard.

VMware is threatened on multiple fronts. Microsoft is quickly bridging the gap between Hyper-V and vSphere, while a growing number of organizations are moving their test and dev workloads to the cloud. OpenStack and Red Hat’s KVM stack are picking up steam in the background.

Feledy asks Miniman how startups match up to traditional vendors in the software-defined ecosystem. He replies that Nexenta and Sanbolic offer mature solutions, and that the legacy providers he’s been tracking have only produced vaporware so far. He mentions EMC’s ViPR as a platform that does not qualify as a “clearly articulated” software-defined solution: it packs management functionality, but doesn’t deliver proper automation and orchestration.

Check out the video below for the full analysis.