ESX 3i will be free for download to everyone as of Monday 28th of July....

As you know, ESX 3i is effectively ESX server without the redhat component, just the hypervisor and offers a more secure package than the full ESX server.
From a market sentiment, I find this a timely move as Hyper-V is having an all out assault on the SMB market in order to gain some market share.

For all those people that were procrastinating about deploying a bare metal server virtualisation infrastructure, it allows the try before you buy and gets the VMware value prop in the door. Throw out those hosted solutions and run 3i.