Good article but I think there is even more in the battle. Yes, as the article says, for example Novell might win some where the management is important but actually all the vendors are working for a common model. See DMTF CIM/WBEM extensions for virtual machines. Will it really be transparent? I don't think so but it will open the door, open standards and open management systems! There was an article "DMTF standardizes virtual server management" in NetworkWorld which mentions VMware and IBM but other vendors as Microsoft, Sun, etc are also fast implementing these standards.
Methods as physical-to-virtual (P2V) are important but mostly one time functions, continuing management, security and performance, for example, will play bigger role in long run. Also, there is (should be) a distinction between classes(?) of virtualization. It is not same to run big servers or run virtual environment in desktop, laptop, PDA or phone. The problems are different. VMware has done well delivering a cheap virtual environment for PC's and Mac's, and even if today mostly used by developers and some other special cases, it may change how systems are run as Java (VM) did.

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