virtualization

CA and VMware announced the results of a sponsored study investigating the impact of data centers virtualization. The study, conducted by the IT Process Institute (ITPI) in December 2008, identifies specific procedures and controls that should be considered to reduce risk as organizations virtualize business-critical systems and when production virtualization objectives beyond server consolidation evolve to high availability, disaster recovery, and dynamic resource management scenarios.

Today Microsoft and Red Hat announced a visualization interoperability deal. Red Hat is the most popular open source brand on the server and a leading Linux distro; Microsoft needs no introduction. The two companies will cooperate based on an open set of standards, and stay away from restrictive patents--the detail that is said to have torpedoed Novell with the open-source community.

The web hosting industry is in a very interesting position in the beginning of 2009, heavily influenced by two opposing trends. The first trend is the continuing growth in IT infrastructure and innovation in the sphere of web-related technologies, while the second one is decreased consumer spending in the face of what everyone expects to be a lengthy, unpleasant recession.

VMWAre is the leader in virtualization technology but Microsoft's market share is rising, according to research from Evans Data. The North American Development Survey 2008, conducted in October and November, polled 400 developers. One third of them said they were involved with virtualization projects, and 56% of those used VMWare tools, compared to 37% for Microsoft.

Recently, Layered Technologies announced that the company became the first hosting provider to launch dedicated servers running Microsoft Windows 2008 and Hyper-V. In this exclusive interview, we talk to Mr. Todd Abrams, COO & President of the company, about the challenges and promises of virtualization technology.

An eWeek.com interview with VMware CEO Dianne Greene provides an overview of the company's history, current projects, and goals. VMWare pioneered commercial x86 virtualization back in the 90s, which in turn lead to the increasing virtualization of the datacenter. Mrs. Greene also touches on the changes VMWare's technology brings to security, cloud computing, and the development and deployment of software.