When Virtualization Is, Well, Just There

You can't have a conversation about virtualization these days without the name "VMware" cropping up in one context or another. Lots of other companies  offering  competitive or complementary products play in the virtualization field, but only VMware has become synonymous with the technology it's hawking.
 
Well, I guess that's only natural when you hold nearly 90 percent of the x86 server virtualization market.
 
But being known as a virtualization company is only going to get VMware so far, Bogomil Balkansky, vice president of product marketing for VMware's server business unit, told me in a recent conversation. That's because virtualization is never the end. It's the means to the end, he says.
 
Enterprises are evolving toward the 100 percent virtual data center and into the cloud. Virtualization will be pervasive."Ten years down the road, virtualization will be so interwoven that it will be taken for granted that every IT vendor does virtualization," Bogomil says.
 
He compares the virtualization trajectory to that of the Internet. "It's silly to call yourself an  Internet company today, and virtualization eventually will be as big as the Internet, so to speak, so no company will be able to say, 'I'm just a virtualization company.'"
 
So, what do you think? If VMware isn't going to be known as just a virtualization vendor in the future, what will be it be?  

Posted by Beth Schultz on 08/07/2009 at 12:49 PM