Reminder -Making the Business Case for Virtualization Webinar today at 12:00 noon EST

Dear Virtualization-Technologists and Evangelists,the Virtualization-Hype is still out there, steadily growing, perhaps waiting to implode or explode or just running out of steam and to be replaced by something else very soon (did we not talk about: ‘Everything computes’ a few years ago?)The virtualization facts:Lots of definitions are out there – I do not have the time for in depth research. The most popular or easiest definition perhaps: Virtual means the separation of physical from logical. Sort of: The device displaying the output and the device doing the computation are in different locations.Interestingly enough: When you have a display on your desk and a computer under the desk, aren’t these devices in different locations (strictly speaking).Nobody would call this a virtual environment.Now what is next? History will show: A new slogan or a new technology or both or only a slogan pretending to be a new technology will be created. Now: The virtualization reality.Here just my modest comment.Virtual is real and I will quickly explain why.So - logically the next slogan must be something like: Vir=real or virrealNow – why is virtual real? Simple answer!When you run an application as an end user (or you are a system admin) and your are staring at the screen looking at the results of the computation – what can we say for sure? Real Software or real instructions (whatever the origin) are executed somewhere on a real processor on real HW under the supervision of real SW (call it OS or stripped down OS or something else) and the results are transported by means of a real cable or a real network and your files are stored on a real storage device. The end user does not care whether the organizational structure of a reasonable combination of HW components and SW components supporting the execution of the end user problem was created in advance or on the fly or in an automated fashion or manually and intentionally pretending to be a non-existing computer or a non-existing Network or a non-existing OS or an non-existing storage device or a non-existing entity of everything or whatever.  Don’t allow yourself to be fooled into the miracle world of virtualization: Everything is real as explained above. Get the Virtualization Hype down to the reality behind. Get real! Or get vir=real or virrealThe applications or the HW or the networks or the storage devices are not hiding in the garden like Easter eggs. They exist somewhere as an electricity consuming and perhaps energy wasting entity. Your customers will be very pleased to hear that, and of course  they want Green IT (that was the slogan on the last CeBit. Best regards Wolfgang Ranft (ex-Citrite)