Virtualization reaches from hand-held devices to the data center to the clouds. Virtually Speaking examines the forces behind this expansion, the suppliers of the technology and the organizations using the technology.
Daniel Kusnetzky is a distinguished analyst and the founder of the Kusnetzky Group LLC. He's also the managing partner of Lux Sonus LLC, an investment firm.
Paula Rooney is a Boston-based writer who has followed the tech industry for more than two decades.
Kenneth 'Ken' Hess is a full-time Windows and Linux system administrator with 20 years of experience with Mac, Linux, UNIX, and Windows systems in large multi-data center environments.
As Alan Laken is supposed to have said, "Failing to plan is planning to fail." While this statement seems true in most areas of life, it really has an impact in the deployment of virtual machine software on both client and server systems.
While I was at IDC, I managed the team that watched system software and virtualization software. That team was one of the very first in the industry to include Linux in its operating system research.
When I've had a chance to speak with executives of suppliers of virtual machine software, they often point out that one of the major benefits of deploying application environments inside of virtual machines is simplicity. That is, they suggest that using virtual machine software reduces complexity in the environment.
One of the key messages most suppliers of any virtualization technology use is that the use of their product will automatically save the customer money. I have concerns that some of them are really over reaching to convince customers.
Coming out of VMworld, I've run into many people who've been convinced that operating systems are becoming an endangered species and that shortly they'll be replaced by virtual machine software. I believe that many have been convinced to adopt this position by VMware's powerful, integrated marketing not by the facts at hand.
I've been chatting with several people, including John-Marc Clark, VP of Marketing of Qumranet about KVM, the open source kernel based virtual machine project that is now part of the Linux kernel, and the company's new product Solid ICE™. Solid ICE, that seems one part access virtualization, one part application virtualization and one part virtual processing software.
From time to time, I run into a very clever marketing campaign that both is very informative and very entertaining. "Greg the Architect" is one of the best of these I've seen.
I had a chance to speak with an interesting newcomer to the world of virtualization, Xsigo. Jon Toor, Xsigo's VP of Marketing, and I chatted about Xsigno's VP780 Network Director.
On September 5th, XenSource announced an embeddable version of their open source hypervisor. Here's a pointer to XenSource's press release.
A client was probing where and how virtual machine software should fit in an organization's overall IT strategy. The discussion got a bit heated at time because I asserted that while virtual machine software is an important addition to an organization's set of tools, it is clearly not a panacea.