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Ask Eric Kuzmack about partnering with VMware during the virtualization specialist's early days, and he sounds more pragmatic than pioneering.

"Yeah, most of our peers thought we were nuts," says Kuzmack, IT architect at news conglomerate Gannett in Silver Spring, Md. "But like a lot of companies, we had lots of [x86] servers running at very low utilization rates, around 5% or 10%, and we saw on paper what the benefits of virtualizing those servers could be."

Convinced by the prospects, in 2002 Gannett began testing VMware's ESX Server - and became a trailblazer in what is one of the decade's fastest-growing industry trends. Gannett made a sound decision: Today, it runs more than 400 virtual machines on dozens of physical servers.

Although he admits he wasn't always so sure x86 platforms would be able to support multiple workloads, Kuzmack says he doesn't feel Gannett took a gamble on VMware. "We approached it methodically. We didn't rush into it," he says. "We continuously examined what kinds of workloads would be appropriate vs. not appropriate."

In addition, Gannett waited for VMware's management tools before beginning the ESX Server deployment. Kuzmack began beta-testing those tools, wrapped in a package called VirtualCenter, in the spring of 2003 as he moved ESX Server into production. VirtualCenter, which provides a single interface for deploying and managing virtual machines, includes VMotion, technology that moves running virtual machines from one physical server to another without disruption. The management package became generally available in the fall of 2003.

Without VirtualCenter and VMotion, VMware users could streamline management by eliminating the sprawl of one- and two-processor servers, but they still had to deal with managing operating systems and applications that ran in virtual containers on the hardware, Kuzmack says. VirtualCenter and VMotion ended the tedious work of logging on to each host server and managing virtual machines individually - and made the virtualization software capable of handling enterprise workloads.

"Management is a big issue as you run more and more virtual machines. . . . And being able to move virtual machines around [with VMotion] eased our concerns about having all of our eggs in one basket," he says.

VirtualCenter and VMotion updates introduced as part of VMware's Infrastructure 3 release this past June take the management features an important step forward, Kuzmack says, because they automatically monitor resource availability and dynamically move virtual machines to make the best use of available compute resources.

"VMware really does an excellent job of listening to its customers, as far as implementing new features and new technologies," he says. That made being an early user particularly beneficial, because VMware was open to ideas and suggestions about how to improve its software. "We provided feedback all along," he says.