Our big virtualization mojo

Virtualization is a strategic initiative at Dell and so we have spent considerable time planning and seeking the requirements of hundreds of our customers of all types and sizes and across many geographies. What we found was pretty revealing, although not particularly surprising: virtualization has matured to the point where it is not just viewed as a red-hot, "solve everything" technology, but as an effective means for our customers to meet specific business needs and objectives.

Ultimately this means that virtualization -- whether we're talking about server virtualization, storage virtualization, I/O virtualization or hypervisors -- is "just" a really good tool that helps IT organizations do things more effectively and less expensively.  

At Dell, our intention is to partner with the very best and most relevant technologies the industry has to offer and then integrate and deliver solutions for our customers in such a way as to take as much guesswork, time and money out of the equation as possible. Whether it's a small business looking to drive high availability across a very simple consolidation a handful of back office servers, or the largest multinational customer looking to streamline how it delivers workloads across multiple geographies, Dell is in a unique position to assemble and integrate the right technologies throughout the customer's lifecycle.  Our competitors try and fit virtualization to their own agenda for systems management, consulting and proprietary building blocks. Dell is adamant that the best path to success is to let our customers' drive our agenda from their perspectives.

Hey! Who's the geek in the vid?

<a href="http://media.dellone2one.com/dell/May2008/New_Servers-Storage.flv"><img src="http://media.dellone2one.com/dell/May2008/Dell_VT_Blockbuster.jpg" border = "0" width="300" height="225"></a><br /><a href = "http://media.dellone2one.com/dell/May2008/New_Servers-Storage.flv">View Video</a><br />Format: flv<br />Duration: 03:20

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Virtual said:

Where is the mention of XenSource and Oracle VM ?

Drew Engstrom said:

In repsonse to Virtual, who asked: 

"Where is the mention of XenSource and Oracle VM ?"

First, the basic, "quantitative" answer to your question: XenSource (acquired by Citrix last Summer and now named "Citrix XenServer") is featured in our announcement. Oracle VM, is not mentioned in the announcement but Dell did particpate in the launch of Oracle VM, and will continue to track customer requirements and assess opportunities.

Behind the discussion of individual hypervisor inclusion lies a deeper question: how many hypervisor products and distributions will there be in 3-5 years and what will they look like? Many will agree that, over time, the functionality of the piece of software known as a hypervisor will become less and less of a differentiating factor, and the management "stack" through which we deploy, monitor, manage and maintain our virtual infrastructure will become a primary source of value (isn't this already the case?). If I take a look at the VMware product page, it's pretty clear that their emphasis is to drive technology innovation into the "management and automation" layer in a way that very purposefully accelerates customers from hypervisor adoption to the benefits of the specific use-cases they are pursuing (test/dev automation, DR, HA, desktop virtualization, image management, etc.). Microsoft, seems intent on building out an ecosystem to pursue a similar management/automation led agenda.

So, here's the question for the community: we have an ecosystem intent on building out value on top of an architecture that assumes the presence of a hypervisor. And, at the same time, we have healthy competition regarding the ownership, distribution and attributes of the hypervisor. Where does this lead us and what does this all mean for the future of the hypervisor? Any thoughts?

 

Where does this lead us and what does this all mean for the future of the hypervisor? Any thoughts?

Hmmm.....  My opinion is that the most "open" approach will be the most appealing - as in how does a customer get the most leverage from the options that are available.  There is a huge tax to customers if cross platform functional and management barriers are set up - as is the case in the storage industry where there is nil interoperability between storage subsystems sold by different vendors.  Of course, this effectively diminishes the potential value-added margins of an individual hypervisor company. Customers need to vote early and often with their checkbooks on this one because it's the only opinion that really matters.

Also I'm thinking we should have posted a warning with this blog post "Geeks @ Work"  In the vid, Chris definitely has the look, but Drew talks the talk.

   

 I think the original article is spot on, the real money and power is managing virtual machines, not in the hypervisor itself. My bet is that the hypervisor will become something akin to the 21st century BIOS, something that's just there and that people don't really care that much about (when was the last time you chose a machine because it had a Phoenix rather than an AMI BIOS?)

Ultimately, the hypervisor is a technology that will be completely commodotized and virtualization vendors that don't react to this trend will disappear.
 

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