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Beyond Consolidation

Should we call this stage two of adoption for virtualization? Am I jumping too soon with my "1x1 makes sense" pitch?
I know some folks, like Paul, aren't quite buying it yet. I'm not saying consolidation drivers are passé. Far from it; the majority of the world's servers are still waiting to be virtualized, right? Look around your own shop and count conversion candidates. Alright, I may have implied that the consolidation savings might not be so great once enhanced storage requirements, network upgrades, host licensing, employee training, etc., are included. But I'll leave that for now.

My chat with HP brought these new drivers into focus last week: almost a third of HP's larger customers (who happen to be implementing VMs, granted, as a further qualifier) are looking at physical to virtual (P2V) to deliver additional functionality such as high availability and flexibility, not necessarily consolidation.

I've been getting this theme as a consistent undercurrent in interviews with ops and service managers, smaller vendors, and other analysts over the last few weeks. Last fall everyone was chatting up capital savings; nothing else seemed to matter. That tune is starting to change.

While I'd like to say that my recent interviews included large Citrix Xen, Virtuzzo, or Virtual Iron installations, well ... I can't. All large sites I met with were running VMware.

So I figured, who better to address the question than a product management director at VMware?

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