Microsoft is making another effort at pinching a few customers from VMware Inc., saying it will give away free Windows Server Datacenter licenses to anyone who switches to Hyper-V.

This is a time-limited offer that does come with a caveat – customers will still be required to obtain a Software Assurance subscription from Microsoft too, which won’t be free, but should at least reduce migration costs. Along with the offer, Microsoft has created a TCO calculator that customers can use to get an idea of the savings they can make from making the switch.

It’s no big surprise that Microsoft is gunning for VMware. It’s Hyper-V offering still trails the virtualization giant by some distance in Gartner Inc.’s Magic Quadrants, even if its made inroads on its rival in recent years. However, with the new platform-level features like Storage Spaces Direct (for creating clustered, resilient storage volumes across both SSDs and spinning disks) and Shielded Virtual Machines (which offer VM protection even if the host is compromised) that are set to land on Windows Server 2016, Hyper-V should be much easier to manage and scale more easily.

Up until now VMware has always managed to fend off any attempted encroachment on its turf due to the superiority of its product, which is widely considered to be better than Hyper-V. But this time around things could possibly be different, with VMware recently admitting that server virtualization is no longer a growth business and generally slowing down the development of vSphere. Microsoft also has the advantage of its upcoming Azure Stack play – on-premises gear that runs the same code as the Azure cloud – which contrasts markedly with VMware’s own, very messy cloud story.

Microsoft’s Hyper-V has been slowly but surely gaining on VMware for years, and promotions like today’s certainly won’t harm its efforts to narrow the gap even more.

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