* Virtualization market moves
It’s clear that 2007 is going to be a turning point for the virtualization market with leader VMware facing increasing competition from others such as Microsoft, Virtual Iron, SWsoft and the open source Xen hypervisor.
This is nothing but good news for enterprise buyers. Competition is good in any venue and in this market it will undoubtedly mean better features at better prices.
Virtual Iron, for example, has been putting a full-court press on VMware lately, claiming that it offers similar virtualization capabilities, such as live migration and automated resource allocation, at just 20% of the cost of VMware Infrastructure 3.
The trouble for Virtual Iron – and for all the x86 virtualization software vendors (except maybe Microsoft), for that matter – is that it hasn’t been able to compete with the name recognition that VMware holds. But last week, Virtual Iron got a boost in that area: HP invited Virtual Iron to be a charter member in its ProLiant Partner Program and BladeSystem Solution Builder Program.
That means that Virtual Iron will get access to a new customer base through HP. HP will rigorously test Virtual Iron’s software on its ProLiant and BladeSystem servers and buyers will be able to get HP systems pre-installed with the x86 server-slicing software. Enterprise buyers also can still buy the hardware and software separately and will get support through Virtual Iron.
“HP puts [the software] through very rigorous testing and validation at its labs in Houston,” says Mike Grandinetti, chief marketing officer at Virtual Iron. Check out this white paper in which HP talks about putting Virtual Iron through the paces on its BladeSystem servers.
Virtual Iron also is improving its credibility with a growing number of customer resources. It announced PGA Tour SuperStore earlier this month and unveiled Priceline.com as a customer last week.
Priceline.com, in Norwalk, Conn., has been using virtualization technologies for a while. Big on open source technology, it started with Xen. It also runs Solaris Containers and VMware, but Ron Rose, CIO at Priceline.com, says it decided to bring in Virtual Iron about six months ago to handle its virtualized Linux environments.
“We thought Virtual Iron’s management capabilities were very competitive,” he says.
