Amy Newman

Could VMware be about to jump the shark? Two new developments hint at the possibility. VMware has made it clear in recent months that it has set it sights on the cloud. What impact this will have for customers and partners firmly on the ground is becoming less clear as its kefuffle this week with […]

Data center infrastructure shifts are often both dramatic and unpredictable until they are well under way. In recent months, it has crystallized that we are embarking on a post-client/server world that is more than just vapor. Virtualization and cloud computing are together redesigning the landscape of the data center. This, of course, is far from […]

Gartner’s latest survey results on IT spending, as reported last week in the Wall St. Journal, predict a decline of 3.8 percent in 2009 (based on U.S. dollars). This exceeds the oft-cited 2.1 percent decline of the 2001 dot-com bust, which up until now has been the benchmark of how low things can go. Forrester […]

There was never any doubt it would happen, but the argument that Hyper-V is “just a hypervisor” is fast becoming spurious. Last week, Microsoft added fault tolerance to its virtualization repertoire with the announcement that it had entered into a development and marketing agreement with Marathon Technologies. In many ways, the news isn’t all that […]

It would be hard to argue with the idea that 2008 was the year virtualization went mainstream. No doubt this growth trajectory will continue in the new year. Two things that surfaced in recent days that merit closer observation, as they will likely shape up into something bigger in the next few months: Windows 7 […]

As 2008 draws to a close, virtualization remains one of the few bright spots in a year mired in financial debacles, a deepening recession and credit crisis that doesn’t seem to be going away any time soon. Virtualization has become a shelter of sorts in the rapidly brewing storm of economic uncertainty. In 2008, virtualization […]

Mobile devices are increasingly finding their way in the server room. As ServerWatch columnist Paul Rubens noted last week, from iPhones to BlackBerries, smartphones are penetrating the enterprise. Sometimes they’re sanctioned, but more often than not they’re coming in as rogue devices. In general, having an official policy is critical, and enterprises that learn to […]

Nowhere are the differences between Xen and VMware more clear than in their strategies. Citrix CTO Simon Crosby highlighted the difference in a recent conversation, noting, “Citrix’ value proposition has been about agile delivery to end users compared to an agile data center,” which VMware touts as its key advantage. While the two strategies aren’t […]

The National Bureau of Economic Research said Monday that the United Stares has been in a recession since last December. We, of course, all suspected this for some time, and terms like “slowdown” and “economic downturn” had been euphuisms du jour while we awaited the official word. The tech sector had been fairly immune, and […]

Somewhat glossed over in the shuffle of last week’s supercomputing show was news that IBM had made a big purchase that has the potential to impact the virtualization market as much as Hyper-V has. Big Blue revealed plans to acquire Transitive, a company that specializes in cross-platform technologies. These technologies include, of course, virtualization. According […]