"It also appears possible, having not seen the pertinent
details, that Red Hat will benefit if its newly-/recently-acquired
KVM technology, for example, can virtualise Windows well. This
would help marketing of RHEL and Linux in general (with KVM 'baked
in').
"On the other bright side, if Hyper-V becomes not a SLES-only
area for decent performance, then companies will be less inclined
to purchase vouchers from Microsoft/Novell (Microsoft openly calls
these "patent royalties" now).
"Hasn't Red Hat distanced itself from Xen somewhat, for obvious
reasons [1, 2]? It's partly because of Microsoft's malicious,
self-serving strategy around hypervisors. They hoard the market
using partners and allies, but they cannot swallow the entire
ocean."