Virtual Iron Launches Channel Program For Xen Platform

Ken Simon, vice president of sales at Enterico, a Bedford, Mass.-based IBM partner and division of Continental Resources, said Virtual Iron is a good choice because of its channel model, low cost of entry and technology. Xen is a key focus of IBM's virtualization strategy and is more cost-effective than proprietary solutions, he added.

"All of the Virtual Iron products and services go through the channel. So there will be no channel conflict, and there is also a low cost of entry to the program, which allows us to certify consultants and get training and materials without making a big up-front investment," Simon said. "There is a lot of interest in virtualization and Xen-based solutions out there right now, and we think Virtual Iron has the best one by far."

Akibia is implementing Virtual Iron's beta code in customer pilots and other noncritical infrastructure deployments, said Ken Mclaurin, senior marketing manager of open source and virtualization at the Westborough, Mass.-based data center services firm. The company will be comfortable recommending the platform for critical infrastructure once it ships, provided that it delivers on its promise, he added.

Virtual Iron has repositioned itself a number of times as the virtualization market has evolved, and the vendor must carve out a niche in the Xen market rather than try to wear many hats, said Stephen Elliot, an analyst at research firm IDC.

"They changed their model a couple of times, first as a provider of management of virtual infrastructure and multiple virtual machines across heterogeneous environments and then [they] had their own hypervisor and switched to Xen," he said.

But there's plenty of room for many vendors, with the virtualization software market now estimated at $50 million to $100 million this year and growing 20 percent annually, according to Elliot. Virtual Iron will go up against the likes of VMware and enterprise management players such as Hewlett-Packard and IBM in the management space, so it must define its core capabilities, he said.

"Whenever I hear data center virtualization, it's treading on multiple silos -- server, storage, network, application, desktop -- and that's a really a broad message that currently none of the leading vendors can deliver," Elliot said. "You don't want to be a jack-of-all-trades. You want to build expertise and credibility."