The fight will undoubtedly net customers good deals on products and services, more attention from sales reps with Swords of Damocles hanging over their heads, and lots of offers for "competitive upgrades" that IT managers can use as leverage.

None of it will benefit the vendors at all. Without some major change, the outcome is almost inevitable: VMware will keep most of the customers looking for the most-sophisticated setups (for a couple of years, anyway); Citrix will expand its app and desktop virtualization businesses, but not as much as it would like; Virtual Iron will hold on to a good percentage of its mid-market virtual-server business, but will be increasingly hard-pressed by the low cost and ubiquity of Microsoft products; Microsoft will sweep up most of the companies that only want to consolidate real servers to virtual servers and much of the market for mid-sized companies looking for higher-functioning virtual infrastructures as well.

That's not as farfetched or entertaining as silly season "news" is supposed to be. It just matches Microsoft's history, the current state of competition in virtualization and against whom each vendor's vitriol is directed.

Maybe there'll be more substance to it all come September. That would help the actual customers more than all the marketing drivel does. But it won't be nearly as much fun.