Sun unveils Virtualization Hypervisor

I'm very bullish on virtualization as the next evolution in the data center environment. Here's a very interesting announcement from my former company Sun Microsystems. VMware and Microsoft are the leaders but it's good to see convergence between software and hardware vendors in that space. As a start-up, we see very clearly the benefits of server virtualization for our development efforts. This is giving us a tremendous leg up to get our product out of the door while keeping our IT costs under control.

EMC to spin off part of VMware in IPO

EMC's CEO is probably getting pressure from shareholders to get the share price up from where it is right now and he's parting with a very valuable asset (or fraction of). I'm very impressed with what VMware has achieved in a very short period of time. In a few years, they (and their competition) have made virtualization a top priority for all IT managers.

Data Center Evolution

Over the last 40 years, the data center has gone through a tremendous evolution. From mainframe to distributed computing, the challenges have remained the same: Manage complexity, reduce operational expenses, optimize utilization of assets and make the business and its employees more productive and flexible. Telecommunications, like no other industry, has been a key driver in this evolution. For many years, Sun has been working with our customers to deliver data center consolidation products and services. These are organized around server, storage, network and application consolidation.

Sun recently announced that the UltraSparc T1-based servers will be able to run multiple operating systems simultaneously. This is significantly changing the way data center will be run in the near future. Vendors like VMware have also been working hard at virtualizing data centers and desktops. Sun's Solaris 10 already is an option for running on VMware, and the Sun Blade 8000 will be certified to run VMware ESX Server 3.0.1. With Xen, though, multi-OS virtualization will essentially be built into Solaris.