Yesterday we read the news of B-hive's acquisition by VMware. Also this week Microsoft closed the Kidaro acquisition, which had been announced earlier in the year. Both of these companies participated in SYS-CON's second international Virtualization Conference & Expo last November in San Francisco. This event was also the last conference BEA Systems sponsored, days before their Oracle acquisition news hit the press. PlateSpin is one of the Gold Sponsors of the upcoming 3rd International Virtualization Conference & Expo in New York City. Novell bought the company before this event has even taken place. In the past six months, four out of nine Virtualization Conference sponsors were acquired.

Burris, who joined Sourcefire's board in March, is head of worldwide sales and services at Citrix Systems. Sourcefire CEO Wayne Jackson said in February that he would step down, with the company saying he was leaving to pursue other opportunities. In a statement, Sourcefire chairman Joseph Chinnici said Burris would bring to the company the discipline and inspiring leadership it needs to grow profitably. Chinnici called Burris' selection 'the culmination of a thoughtful and disciplined process of succession planning.'

Pushing back against VMware, its chief rival, Tuesday, Citrix released its ballyhooed, on-demand XenDesktop, the widgetry that delivers custom, managed virtual Windows desktops from a data center server to a user over the network, and priced the stuff. Theres a free Express Edition for up to 10 users; an entry-level Standard Edition for $75 per concurrent user; an Advanced Edition for $195 per concurrent user; an Enterprise Edition for $295 per concurrent user; and a Platinum Edition for $395 per concurrent user.

Microsoft figures that in five years time half the Exchange mailboxes in the world - perhaps 160 million mailboxes - will be running on its servers in its cloud infrastructure on Exchange Online. At least that's Microsoft senior vice-president Chris Capossela told Reuters going into the Reuters Global Technology, Media and Telecoms Summit the other day.

Mike Neil is general manager for virtualization strategy in the Windows Server Division at Microsoft. Mike is focused on the delivery of the Windows virtualization technology, including Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, Microsoft Hyper-V Server and Virtual PC 2007. Mike also directs the technical enablement of Microsoft's broader vision for virtualization, to include virtualization management tools and virtualized desktop infrastructure. Prior to this role, Mike was responsible for Microsoft's server and PC virtualization efforts since 2003.

To address this issue of improving capacity utilization, more and more companies and information technology departments are implementing infrastructure solutions, such as server and storage consolidation through virtualization. With the promise of a new day rising upon the desktop environment, companies are taking a 'return-to-the-mainframe' mentality, leveraging these same solutions, and in many cases, the same IT skills, to re-deploy desktops. Via mainframe-inspired System x x86 server hardware located within the datacenter, the entire desktop operating system and application stack can be virtualized, delivering the complete multimedia experience that users have become accustomed to, but without the security concerns and spiraling management costs of the traditional 'fat client' PC approach.

The web fanatics and blogosphere would have you believe that all applications will move to the web. Some will, most will not. Reliability, scalability, security, and a host of other issues will prevent most businesses from moving their mission critical applications to hosted services or cloud based services. The risk of failure is too great.

You need to think of cloud computing in three different layers - infrastructure, infrastructure management & platform as a service. At the infrastructure level you have the basis for cloud computing. This is where you'll find virtual servers or services like Amazon.com EC2. A level above the infrastructure layer you find companies that provide tools to help developers deal with managing their own systems running on top of the infrastructure layer. The third layer is Platform as a Service and is where Morph plays.

Cloud computing is said to be the user-friendly version of grid computing. We know grid computing brought together the high performance computers, the middleware, and strategies to utilize hundreds and thousands of computers linked by advanced networks. We know this took place in universities, research labs and medical schools around the world over many years.

as: Al Aghili (Managed Methods), Alan Chhabra (Egenera), Andi Mann (Enterprise Management Associates), Andrew Conte (APC), Andy Astor (EnterpriseDB), Ariel Cohen (Xsigo Systems), Bill O'Conell (IBM), Bob Lozano (Appistry), Bob Quinn (3Leaf Systems), Brian Martin (IBM), Carlo Innocenti Ph.D. (DataDirect Technologies), Chris Shayan (Ashna Samane), Chris Wiborg (Cisco), David Kleidermacher (Green Hills Software), Doc D'Errico (EMC Corporation), Donato Buccella (Certeon), Dror Gill (Ceedo), Etay Bogner (Neocleus), George Pradel (Vizioncore), Geva Perry (GigaSpaces), Gordon Hunt (Real-Time Innovations), Gregory Brail (Sonoa Systems), Greg Lyon (Egenera), Harry Petty (Brocade), Hezi Moore (Reflex Security), Hubert Yoshida (Hitachi Data Systems), Ian Thain (Sybase), Jacek Kruszelnicki (Numatica Corporation), Jeremy Geelan (SYS-CON Media), Jerry Melnick (Marathon Technologies), Joe McKendrick (WebServices.org), Johan Nordin (Software AG), John Goodson (DataDirect), John Senor (iWay Software), JP Morgenthal (Avorcor), Julian Weinstock (Desktone), Keith Swenson (Fujitsu), Ken North (Computing, LLC), Kenon Owens (VMware), Kevin Epstein (Scalent Systems), Koen Aers (Red Hat/JBoss), Kurt Daniel (Parallels), Kurt Ziegler (SIMtone), Kyle Gabhart (Web Age Solutions), Mark Davydov Ph.D. (Blue Cross Blue Shield), Mark Hapner (Sun Microsystems), Mark Milligan (VirtualLogix), Matt George (Fidelity Investments), Michael CareyPh.D. (BEA Systems), Michael Gorman (Whitemarsh Information Systems), Mike Pizzo (Microsoft), Miko Matsumura (Software AG), Nikita Ogievetsky (Morgan Stanley), Parviz Peiravi (Intel), Paul Lipton (CA), Paul Vasquez (VMware), Peter Manca (Egenera), Phil Morris (Sun Microsystems), Pierre Fricke (Red Hat / JBoss), Ravi Gururaj (VMLogix), Rich Lechner (IBM), Rich Schreiber (Nastel Technologies), Richard Mark Soley (OMG), Rick German (Stoneware), Robert Steward (DataDirect), Ron Williams (Tivoli Software), Sean Derrington (Symantec), Shai Fultheim (ScaleMP), Simon Crosby (Citrix), Stefanos Damianakis (Netrics), Stephen Herrod (VMware), Stephen Pollack (PlateSpin), Tom Bishop (BMC Software), Ursula Sinkewicz (Fidelity Investments), Victoria Livschitz (Grid Dynamics), Yakov Fain (Farata Systems).

Infinite Group announced that it has been awarded status as a Microsoft Certified Partner. Acceptance by Microsoft as a Certified Partner is an achievement and is only granted to companies with a skilled and experienced Microsoft certified team and a demonstrated track record of performance using Microsoft tools in delivery of Information Technology services.

Lehman Brothers analyst Tim Luke thinks maybe, just maybe mind, AMD might try to move up Shanghai, the 45nm version of the 65nm Barcelona from 4Q08/1Q09 to 3Q08, which by the calendar is just around the corner. However, he's not giving the scuttlebutt that much credence 'given AMD's track record of execution delays' with Barcelona.

Skytap is a provider of cloud-based virtualization solutions available as secure, on-demand services over the Web. Skytap solutions enable IT and development teams to develop, test, deploy and manage applications in a virtual environment, increasing their ability to respond to business needs and shorten time to market, while reducing overhead and cost. Skytap users have access to virtually unlimited computing capacity which can augment on-site infrastructure for short-term needs or eliminate the need for it entirely. Skytap's virtual infrastructure and software platform provides services such as virtual infrastructure provisioning, monitoring & management, security, remote access and collaboration, storage management, and reporting.

Virtualization is not a new story; its technologies allow companies to meet new business needs and say goodbye to underutilized hardware platforms, power consumption, server sprawl and spiraling IT costs. The technology is here and the benefits are already proving to be fruitful. However, these benefits are only possible if effective management tools are in place. This session will discuss virtualization's missing link - data center automation - and how organizations can use it to create an agile, policy-based environment to automate and orchestrate virtual machine lifecycle management. For without proper management, companies only have a piece of the virtualization puzzle.

As virtualization platform vendors strengthen and expand the feature sets of their respective offerings, it is almost a certainty that the data center in the future will include a heterogeneous mix of virtualization platforms as well as physical platforms. For organizations that are moving to virtualization, choosing the correct platform for their needs is only the start. For certain, organizations also will need to obtain a set of virtualization utilities to assist in moving to, and managing, one or more virtual platforms in their data centers. These utilities must not simply be ?repurposed? tools from the physical world, but should also be specifically designed to leverage the efficiencies and unique characteristics of the virtual platform. Virtualization utilities will be required for converting P2V, V2V, monitoring and optimizing performance of VMs, enabling backup and disaster recovery strategies, and reducing the costs of backup storage. The solutions needed to perform these tasks must not only be feature-rich and easy-to-use, they must also be multi-platform in order to support efficiencies in the data center and promote the highest ROI for virtualization projects.

While the next-generation data center has begun to take shape, the promise of true dynamic computing has so far eluded today's resource, bandwidth and power constrained enterprises. Now however, key advancements in network and processor technologies are converging to lift the remaining barriers and enable truly dynamic computing. In this presentation, IT professionals will learn why this convergence enables the Coherent Network, turning an Enterprise Data Center into a single dynamic resource pool of compute cores, memory, and I/O.

With a remote workforce, either through offshoring business processes or remote home workers, it is essential to keep the data safe while providing the most flexible computing experience. This session will discuss the strategies and pitfalls when building a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI). It will discuss cost issues and help customers build a compelling Retrun On Investment through determining the Total Cost of Ownership of a VDI implementation. This session will also cover the strategic architecture and how to build a VDI Solution that will allow an Organization to reap the benefits of a remote workforce.

Data center architects naturally seek to employ server virtualization to maximize the use of their hardware systems. An often overlooked factor that can undermine this goal is data connectivity. 75 to 95 percent of the response time now associated with database access can often be attributed to the data connectivity layer - and that's using traditional, non-virtualized servers. Running multiple virtual servers on a single machine can introduce additional complications involving data access. This presentation will examine the importance of data connectivity in a virtualized environment, and the need to take an intelligent approach to data access in order to truly reap the benefit of a virtualization strategy.

Does virtualization matter? Can virtual desktops go beyond the sum of the virtual parts? What is the business value and at what price? As server virtualization continues to gain deeper traction and provide benefits beyond server consolidation, desktop virtualization is widely expected to follow a similar trajectory and address many of the challenges associated with enterprise desktops. Virtual desktops hold the promise of increased business agility at reduced complexity and cost, while providing high fidelity user experience at a lower carbon footprint. How is this promise delivered? This session explores the current technology trends, business scenarios and economic imperatives that are shaping the future of virtual desktops, enabling new delivery and consumption models.

As data growth rates continue to climb and business requirements further evolve, customers are feeling the pressure to realign their storage infrastructure to better meet the needs of their business. Mr. Yoshida will discuss how storage virtualization is the key enabler towards the storage-based services required to deliver substantial breakthroughs in efficiency and business agility across the entire enterprise. He will discuss how storage-based services such as thin provisioning, content and file management and dynamic data migration, enabled via controller-based Virtualization, are paving the way for the Dynamic Data Center of tomorrow.

Virtual Cloud Computing represents the next wave of virtualization and offers significant market opportunities by providing a new, simpler, and much more pervasive platform for on-demand, desktop and application service delivery. While server-side virtualization helps enterprises optimize data center resources, the use of a universal dialtone technology offers a significantly larger market for desktop users in both commercial and consumer segments. The key to virtual cloud computing is in the universal dialtone which securely links users to desktop applications and content resources, on demand, via any device.

Most enterprises today are facing the challenges of datacenter space, power, and performance. With increasing demand for 'more' while paying 'less', the IT industry is looking for new technologies, best methods, and practices to find solution to this problem. The Evergreen Datacenter framework is an architectural framework that formulates the best practices and methodologies along with latest technologies that allow enterprises to design an infrastructure with maximum space and power efficiencies. These efficiencies result in 2x the performance while maintaining or reducing the power envelope. Virtualization, high performance, power efficient server platforms are core components of Evergreen Datacenter framework. This discussion will examine the best practices in designing and implementing the Evergreen Datacenter. This session will demonstrate the use of the latest virtualization technology from both a hardware and software perspective, in addition to providing the methodology for developing a virtual infrastructure.

With the rapid deployment of server virtualization technology in the data center, IT management is actively looking at optimizing their SAN storage architecture to reap the full benefits of their virtualization investment, such as workload mobility and disaster recovery, without running into I/O bottlenecks and unpredictable utilization of SAN resources that comes with a much more dynamic environment. This session will explore how Data Center Fabric enables virtual servers and physical servers to stand on an equal footing. It will also discuss capabilities specifically designed to support virtualized environments such as VMware ESX, Microsoft Hyper-V and Xen.

How can virtualization help transform your IT environment into a dynamic datacenter? In this Virtualization Keynote, Dr Stephen Herrod will explore how a virtualized IT infrastructure gives any organization a sustainable competitive advantage. We have reached a point in time, Herrod believes, when the industry is shifting and the true power of virtualization is being unleashed, allowing for reduced costs, more efficient use of resources, increased availability of applications and faster responsiveness to business needs.

Citrix announced the availability of Citrix XenServer software factory integrated on Dell PowerEdge servers. Citrix and Dell have partnered to make integrated server virtualization technology a reality for customers of all sizes. The initial products now available to Dell customers worldwide include the Citrix XenServer Dell Express Edition and Citrix XenServer Dell Enterprise Edition as part of factory-integrated solutions designed to make it even easier for customers to begin implementing their virtualization strategies. The Citrix XenServer Dell products are virtualization solutions that feature integrated Dell management agent technology. As a result, customers can use the same familiar Dell OpenManage System Management software on their existing Dell servers to help increase server and storage utilization. By coupling Citrix XenServer with Dell?s PowerEdge servers, the companies bring built-in, easy-to-use virtual machine installation and management to millions of Dell customers worldwide.

Kroll Ontrack announced its ability to perform data recovery services on VMware systems. Using newly developed proprietary technology, Kroll Ontrack conceived and developed capabilities specifically designed to recover folders and files on all types of virtual systems. This capability provides businesses with a viable resource when data loss occurs in these environments.

Virtual Iron announced plans to validate its platform with the Microsoft Server Virtualization Validation Program. As part of this program, which became operational today, Virtual Iron will test and validate the Virtual Iron platform running Windows Server 2008 operating system. Once the platform is validated, Microsoft will offer cooperative support to Virtual Iron customers running the validated configuration of Microsoft Windows Server-based guest operating systems in Virtual Iron virtual environments. As a result, mutual customers will receive improved support hand-offs between the two companies and greater access to Microsoft's worldwide support capabilities.

I was chatting with a customer the other day who was struggling with some of the implications of cloud computing. The analogy that finally made sense to them is what I will call 'cloud dining.' I am the cook in the house and I am tasked with feeding the family. If my 10-year old is lobbying for Italian, I am cook at home or order out. The decision may also vary from day to day. For instance, I might not have all the ingredients and have to order out, or, like this weekend, it may be 103 outside and cooking at home is not all that appealing. Now, the same can be said for supporting a given application in a cloud computing environment.

The Cloud just got another potential injection of PR from Apple as well with their announcement of MobileMe. Apple has brought a new technology term, the 'Cloud' - previously reserved for developers, IT managers and the like - to the main-stream public. We all know that the term 'Cloud Computing' is relatively new to the Technology buzz. But just how new is it?

Akorri announced the availability of its flagship BalancePoint management platform for Citrix XenServer virtualized environments and certification in the Citrix Ready program. BalancePoint for Citrix XenServer offers cross-domain management and advanced analytics for virtualized environments running Citrix XenServer. For Citrix XenServer customers, BalancePoint provides deep visibility into server and storage resources to help resolve data center performance problems and improve service levels.

PlateSpin reaffirmed its commitment to support Citrix XenServer across the PlateSpin product line. XenServer support is a key element of PlateSpin's multiplatform strategy, which aims to offer enterprises a unified suite of solutions for managing heterogeneous data center environments and making physical and virtual infrastructures work as one.

This is the smart move for Citrix. Being a major player in server virtualization was never in the cards for them. For one thing, Citrix is missing the equivalent of VMware Virtual Center and Virtual Iron's Virtualization Manager - which is requisite for true server virtualization. Additionally, their whole business model is around desktop solutions and leveraging this is the right thing for them to do. Another factor that must be considered in the Citrix 'shift' is Microsoft and the MS Hyper-V solution. Does Citrix really want to compete head-to-head with their biggest strategic partner? Citrix probably won't agree and will deny that they are 'shifting' away from server virtualization. But keep your eyes open. I predict that their actions going forward will fortify my analysis.

VMLogix announced its support for Citrix XenServer 4.1. VMLogix LabManager is a virtual lab automation solution designed to simplify and accelerate key processes in the software application lifecycle by leveraging server virtualization -- improving software development cycle times, increasing product reliability, ensuring accurate environment reproducibility and enhancing team productivity.

Citrix announced that the demand for its application delivery infrastructure in the Pacific region (Asia Pacific including Japan) is fast growing as more businesses are seeking a dynamic and flexible way of delivering applications and desktops to users anytime, anywhere. As one of the fastest growing geographies with 28 percent year-on-year growth in the first quarter of 2008, Citrix in the Pacific has a strong installed base of 33,000 customers, representing 18 percent year-on-year growth in new customers acquired in the year 2007.

Citrix has bought sepago GmbH's sepagoProfile software so user profiles in XenDesktop, XenApp and Provisioning Server are integrated. Terms were not disclosed but as part of the deal the Cologne-based sepago will continue developing the product for virtualizing application provisioning for the next year and a half. Sepago specializes in application provisioning on large computer networks.

Referring to Cloud Computing, Citrix CEO Mark Templeton said this week that 'Customers need the time to get comfortable with it and all that's different from the proprietary model, and the industry needs time to make it consumable.' Templeton was speaking to a reporter at the Citrix iForum 2008 in Edinburgh, Scotland.

VMware CTO Steve Herrod, Citrix CTO Simon Crosby, Red Hat CTO Brian Stevens, Egenera CTO Pete Manca, and Allen Stewart, Group Manager of Windows Virtualization at Microsoft are among the top industry executives joining Jeremy Geelan in the famous 4th Floor Reuters Studio overlooking Times Square for a special SYS-CON.TV 'Virtualization Power Panel' to be recorded on the eve of SYS-CON's 3rd International Virtualization Conference & Expo being held 23-24 June 2008 in New York City.

Double-Take unveiled its protection, availability and migration solutions for Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V. Support includes real-time physical-to-virtual (P2V) full system replication for migration and failover, and virtual-to-virtual (V2V) replication and failover for maximum uptime. Double-Take Software will release an edition of Double-Take designed for Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, allowing IT administrators to replicate and failover entire virtual machines between Hyper-V hosts for V2V disaster recovery and remote availability.

Is 'Virtualization 2.0' just a catchphrase? Is it a new term that analysts can cling to? Is it a re-hash of technology from 20 years ago? Is it new? Is this really new technology that will have a material impact on how data centers are managed? If not, then it's just another marketing term that will fall by the wayside in due time.

2007 was a breakout year for virtualization, as it finally hit the mainstream. But where do we go from here? The virtualization 'wave' is just forming. And while server virtualization is at full crest, there are many more waves behind this that are taking shape and quite frankly, are more significant.