Aren't we forgetting something? Virtualization is still more than virtual machine software

I've enjoyed seeing all of the market and industry excitement about virtualization technology. Since I've been involved in this technology since the early 1980s (oops, I gave away my age), it's wonderful to see the new-found enthusiasm some are showing for finding ways to work in a more logical or more virtual computing environment. Some, however, are missing the point that virtualization is much more than merely virtual machine technology.

The media and many in the financial analysis communities seem have a far too narrow focus. To them, virtual machine software is everything and 30 years of development in other areas of virtualization technology means nothing. Virtual machine software, after all, is only one portion of processing virtualization. Processing virtualization, in turn, is just one of many layers of virtualization technology that are in use around the world today. If you're interested in learning more about the Kusnetzky Group model of virtualization, please review the post Sorting out the different layers of virtualization.

In the past 4 months, I've spoken with more than 60 different vendors who are offering products and services in the areas of access virtualization, application virtualization, processing virtualization, storage virtualization, network virtualization, security for those virtualized resources and management of virtual and physical resources. Each of them was doing something interesting and innovative. Furthermore, each of these areas of virtualization technology are centers for a great deal of activity, opportunities for investment and sources of potential relief for beleaguered IT organizations.

What do you think that technology suppliers can do to get journalists and analysts to take a broader, and more realistic, view of the state of the art?