Multiple virtualization vendors in one IT shop? If so, the management challenge changes

A survey published at The Hot Aisle this week purports a shift in the virtualization market that we've heard about from Microsoft and Citrix more and more over the past few months: people are adopting more than one virtualization technology in their environments.VMware has had an impressive run as a near-monopoly in the server virtualization space for the past several years. And, the competitors

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Making cloud computing work: customers at 451 Group summit say costs, trust, and people issues are key

A few weeks back, the 451 Group held a short-but-sweet Infrastructure Computing for the Enterprise (ICE) Summit to discuss "cloud computing in context." Their analysts, some vendors, and some actual customers each gave their own perspective on how the move to cloud computing is going -- and even what's keeping it from going.The customers especially (as you might expect) came up with some

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7 ways Twitter improves an IT conference. And 2 ways it makes things worse.

This week, VMware announced that the presentations from VMworld 2009 were available for download. And they, of course, used Twitter to do so -- a much used source of "data center dialog," if I do say so myself.It's been a few weeks since VMworld, but I'm amazed by the engagement still going on with that show via Twitter (check it out for yourself at #vmworld). As Andi Mann from EMA pointed out

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VMworld '09 proves VMware is no Foreigner to big ambitions

Last week, VMware played host to over 12,000 guests and one '70s/'80s rock band at its annual VMworld event. At its most basic, the show (minus the concert part) was a great place to get some hands-on experience with VMWare technology -- the labs were packed all week (despite a bumpy start).But I always look at these events as a measuring stick for the ambitions of the host. It was no surprise to

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