Virtualization Going Mainstream

Virtualization is about to become a very real element in the open-source world. A growing number of both large and small end-user companies, along with some of their more adventurous solution-provider partners, are seeing a faster-than-expected return on their initial investments. As they do, many are encouraged to commit further to a range of different virtualization technologies.

Analysts, too, appear surprised by the unexpectedly rapid acceptance of virtualization. Some admit they didn't expect to see this level of support for another few years.

"In the Intel space, we were surprised how far and deep virtualization has gone. When we began our research study a year ago, we thought it was a niche play," says Michelle Bailey, research director at IDC for enterprise servers. "But it's very much in production-level, mission-critical applications on the business-processing and decision-support side. We were shocked by that."

The accelerated level of product delivery among Linux and other open-source companies was evident at April's LinuxWorld Conference Expo in Boston, where a number of companies rolled out new virtualization offerings.

Virtual Iron Software debuted what it claims is the first virtualization-management software to integrate XenSource's Xen hypervisor technology, making it possible for users and VARs to piece together solutions that combine 32- and 64-bit Linux and Windows applications. Company executives say end users and VARs can do so without making any modifications to the existing applications.

Just as important, the new offering significantly broadens the market opportunities for those open-source solution providers willing to get educated on virtualization technologies, company execs say.

"The retail opportunity for the channel, with this release, is much greater than in the past," says John C. Thibault, Virtual Iron's president and CEO. "We're leveraging both open-source and open standards more than ever and so are creating multiple revenue opportunities for partners."

Likewise, ISVs are pursuing opportunities with some of the bigger end users that traditionally have been technologically conservative but are now stepping out of the box.

"The largest of banks are using Xen, [which allows users to move around the host server] very quickly," says David Crosbie, CTO of Waltham, Mass.-based Leostream, a developer of virtual data-center management products. "You can build a huge pool with hundreds of hosts and treat them all as one big bucket."

Even XenSource has announced that it's getting into the business of using virtualization to work across Linux and Windows environments. At LinuxWorld, the company unveiled a beta version of XenEnterprise, open-source virtualization software that has the ability to run on Windows-based machines.

ISV SWsoft rolled out the Datacenter Automation Suite, a collection of Web-based tools for provisioning and managing virtual data centers.

"The timing of this product is good because automation will become an increasingly important piece of the core differentiation between virtualization technologies," says Serguei Beloussov, CEO of SWsoft.