For quite some time now, the industry has been promising the idea of data center consolidation through the use of blade server technology. Hitachi believes that it has just the solution. The solution being offered by Hitachi is their BladeSymphony technology with Virtage. The new product includes Virtage which Hitachi is calling a breakthrough embedded virtualization feature that builds virtualization right into For quite some time now, the industry has been promising the idea of data center consolidation through the use of blade server technology. Hitachi believes that it has just the solution.The solution being offered by Hitachi is their BladeSymphony technology with Virtage. The new product includes Virtage which Hitachi is calling a breakthrough embedded virtualization feature that builds virtualization right into a blade server’s hardware for the first time. The company claims it will provide customers an alternative to third-party software solutions and thus enable them to decrease overhead costs while still increasing manageability and performance.BladeSymphony with Virtage also includes blade symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) interconnect technology which improves scalability by enabling users to configure multiple blades so that they work as a single system. It is designed with a 10U chassis that supports hot-swappable blades that are capable of running both Windows and Linux operating systems. Built on standards-based multi-core Intel processors with Intel Virtualization Technology (Intel VT), the product allows users to combine, scale, and virtualize BladeSymphony blades on Dual-Core Intel Itanium 2 9000 Series processors. It can also support BladeSymphony blades based on Dual-Core Intel Xeon processors within the same chassis. IDC group’s VP and GM of Enterprise Computing, Vernon Turner, said “BladeSymphony with Virtage is a leap ahead in the virtualization game. This technology will further fuel the significant growth of the blade market, as IDC has projected. Embedded virtualization, coupled with BladeSymphony’s mix-and-match capabilities that allow users to work with Intel Xeon processor and Itanium processor-powered blades in the same chassis, will give end-users an expanded variety of options as they design their enterprise-class environment.”The product was introduced in Japan back in August 2006 and was first demonstrated in North America last September at the Intel Developer’s Forum. BladeSymphony with Virtage will be generally available in North America around January 2007. Software Development