VMware

x86 had instructions that behaved differently in privileged mode without faulting, which made classical virtualisation impossible. VMware worked around it with binary translation: instructions were rewritten on the fly. The result was that ten underused physical servers could become ten virtual machines on one, which fundamentally changed data centre economics.

vMotion, which moves a running machine between hosts without interruption, seemed close to magical for years. Broadcom acquired the company in 2023 and restructured licensing into bundled subscriptions, which for many customers meant steep price rises and accelerated migrations to Proxmox and KVM.