Late last month, AMD said that, yes, it would indeed start shipping its long-awaited quad-core Barcelona Opteron processors in August. Times definitely are good for server buyers, with Intel saying that it, too, would be shipping new products in August. Media reports quote Intel as saying it will have a faster, more energy efficient quad-core Xeon processor ready next month, as well. Intel already has shipped more than a million quad-core Xeons since introducing them last November.

I’ve talked before about how this is the year when x86 server virtualization is really going to take off. Now that industry standard systems are becoming more and more powerful, virtualization is making even more sense. But how do you really know when your organization is ready to adopt virtualization for those x86 systems that used to be a single-box-per-single application scenario?

My former colleague Denise Dubie put together a good story last week outlining 10 questions that analyst firm Enterprise Management Associates says companies should ask before rolling out virtualization projects. Read Denise’s full story here.

The bottom line is that your organization needs the right skills, the right security capabilities, appropriate management tools and solid business reasons in order for virtualization efforts to be successful.

For example, virtualization can introduce more security issues – things like hypervisor infections and malicious virtual machines – than you might imagine; capacity planning is a must, since virtual machines can quickly turn into virtual sprawl; and network bandwidth has to be considered, since virtualization can result in more network traffic than you’re ready to handle.

Check out Denise’s story and let me know if these questions are ones you’ve already considered, or if they bring up areas you really haven’t thought about yet.