VMware: Time for vacation?

No kidding. This "Earth Friendly" piece of software is helping people and industry give the server count a severe jolt by bunging them all in a lot less physical boxes. This Canadian vacation company, called Intrawest, realized that its own server farm needed a break.

"

In a lab environment, VMs made sense and there wasn’t a lot of push-back, he said. Bringing VMs into a production environment, however, has been a big challenge. Conceptually, the IT department has approval to proceed, but the details and what it’s going to mean to the business haven’t been worked out yet.

"

I'll agree. You know why? Even though this has nothing to do with the performance. Change. Yes. And Management of that Change is what we need. The transition process needs to be carefully planned and executed! Thats the roadmap a lot of companies/organizations need to look at. Its not the technology, its us and our fear to let go! Labs are great and I've seen labs run faster and effectively than the production boxes. Anyways like I said, its change we all are scared of. And who wouldn't be. Its natural. Its human.

In another news , Proofpoint has started a Messaging Security Gateway virtual appliance beta program.

"

The introduction of this appliance brings the benefits of server virtualization to the enterprise messaging security market. The virtual appliance offers all the benefits of its physical counterpart (zero-overhead administration, ease-of-management, high performance and extensive security features) as well as the many benefits of virtualization, including low cost, easy deployment and provisioning, simplified change management and easy backup and disaster recovery.

"

Sure. Its appliance mentality. Times are a changing. "Your appliances are belong to us" as someone would yell on Slashdot :-)

So why is this firm called VMware "Earth friendly"? I'll tell you in my market-busting post later...