Vizioncore recently announced vConverter, a product that can migrate physical machines to virtual machines and virtual machines to physical machines. Why should anyone care? The key is having an increased ability to orchestrate the environment, recover from a disaster and the ability to create an agile environment.
As the converted know, one of the key attributes of an environment based upon one or more virtualization technologies is the ability the organization receives of being able to make the most use of its physical resources. Products such as vConverter could certainly help.
Here's how Vizioncore describes the product
vConverter is an enterprise-class conversion solution that significantly reduces the time and effort spent converting servers to the VMware, Microsoft, XenServer or Virtual Iron platforms. vConverter enables lightning fast and easy conversions without disrupting the source physical system during the conversion process.
There are never any reboots, no need to visit machines being converted, no software to install on the source and no downtime. A significant R&D effort and focus on conversion reliability and efficiency has resulted in the fine tuning of read/write/transfer algorithms and the creation of several mechanisms which result in impressive speed and conversion completion metrics.
Combined with an impressive simultaneous conversion capability, vConverter is ideal for medium to large server consolidation initiatives where hundreds or thousands of physical servers need to be virtualized. vConverter can migrate more servers per conversion window than any other conversion method or technology, dramatically reducing risk, cost and time from start to finish.
Snapshot analysis
Although interesting, vConverter is not unique in this rapidly evolving market. Companies such as Acronis, Cassatt, Parallels, PlateSpin, VMware, and others are offering products that can perform this magic feat or include that capability in part of a more powerful product. Another point is that vConterter supports VMware's ESX Server, Microsoft's Virtualization products and Virtual Iron. That's a good start but, where's Red Hat's Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) or Novell SUSE's SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) on the list. I couldn't find them no matter how hard I looked. Some of the competitors offer a stronger list of environments that can be teleported or, perhaps, beamed from place to place.All of this competition means that regardless of the power of the product's base technology, the company faces a big challenge on the marketing front. This also would have an impact on potential sales as well.
The key question is how well will the company be able to help IT decision-makers who are already overwhelmed by the constant flow of virtualization-related announcements learn that Vizioncoare exists, learn that vConverter exists, learn what that product could do to help that decision-maker sleep better at night (or sleep at all for that matter) and want to learn more about the product or, perhaps, invite Vizioncore's dogs and ponies over for a show.
Although I've heard from the company from time to time, I've not gotten the impression that they're able to do all of these things in the face of powerful competition.