Virtualizations Time to Roll
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In the fledgling history of virtualization,
this summer may go down
as a watershed.
On the upside, two major events
among leading vendors lent even more
legitimacy to virtualization. First came
the long-awaited initial public offering
of market leader VMware on August
14. The next day, Citrix said it would
acquire XenSource, an open source virtualization
vendor.
The only downside: Microsoft, in
the same month, said it would push
back its Windows Server 2008 introduction
to next February, delaying the
release of new server virtualization
software.
Regardless of the setback, virtualization
is ready for its close-up. Deployments of server virtualization
software—which allow companies to
run multiple operating systems on a
single, virtual machine—have grown
in recent years. Forrester says 51% of
North American businesses were either
using or piloting virtualization software
last year, up almost 10 percentage
points from 2005.
Virtualizing other pieces of the IT
puzzle, like applications, desktops and
even hardware, are also on the rise.
"Virtualization has the potential to
touch every aspect of infrastructure,"
says Raghu Raghuram, vice president
of products and solutions for VMware.
"It's pretty limitless."
Next Page: Alleviating Concerns
Mid-Market 
