CIO.com recently did a story on the "10 Virtualization Vendors to Watch in 2008". It says, "Virtualization could hardly be hotter as a trend, yet virtualization management and security tools are still in their infancy. At first, it defies logic." And I would tend to agree wholeheartedly with that statement. Virtualization is a hot topic and a hot trend in the industry. And to me, it's just getting hotter with ea CIO.com recently did a story on the “10 Virtualization Vendors to Watch in 2008”. It says, “Virtualization could hardly be hotter as a trend, yet virtualization management and security tools are still in their infancy. At first, it defies logic.”And I would tend to agree wholeheartedly with that statement. Virtualization is a hot topic and a hot trend in the industry. And to me, it’s just getting hotter with each passing day. The platform vendors are doing a great job with the technology, but it’s the third-party vendors and the users that keep pushing this technology forward. Things are moving so fast, there’s just no way the platform vendors can do it all. The thing that’s great about this technology is all of the different use cases that it solves. It’s no longer just about server consolidation and legacy application support. New uses for the technology are being invented all the time, and third-party vendors keep filling these niche needs until the platform vendors can catch up.CIO magazine lists the following 10 virtualization vendors to watch. So I took a look at each of them to see why they were selected and to find out who and what they are all about. CiRBA – CiRBA’s Data Center Intelligence (DCI) software enables organizations to rapidly analyze and visually map the safest path to an optimally consolidated or virtualized datacenter. Covering numerous platforms, CiRBA addresses configuration, workload and business constraints required for success within any consolidation or virtualization strategy. Vizioncore – The company is perhaps best known for their vRanger Pro backup software. But the company attacks a number of other virtualization issues as well. Now part of the Quest Software family, the company is expanding into other virtualization platforms as was evident when they changed their product names from starting with “esx” to a simplified and broader “v” naming pattern. The company’s vCharter software can examine and report on what’s happening within a virtual machine, while its vOptimizer can then optimize the performance, speed and size of that virtual machine. Akorri – Akorri’s BalancePoint Suite helps solve workload balancing issues by enabling IT organizations to intelligently balance application performance and infrastructure utilization. The product was designed to help get control over virtualized IT environments by providing advanced analytics and cross-domain management. BalancePoint enables IT operations staff to manage, optimize and plan application performance across server and storage virtualization. Platform Computing – Platform Computing created VM Orchestrator and Enterprise Grid Orchestrator out of their expertise in grid computing and workload automation. Platform VM Orchestrator (VMO) is an automated, policy-driven, virtual environment manager that supports Citrix’s XenServer v4 to deliver web-based virtual machine lifecycle management, multi-host dynamic resource management (DRM), resource-aware high availability (HA), and self-service virtual machine management. Embotics – Recently out of stealth mode, the company announced its first product, V-Commander. The V-Commander software application is a centralized, policy-based VM Lifecycle Management and control system for VMs that allows organizations to gain better oversight and control over their VM environments. And it helps free up IT staff for more important tasks and expands their ability to take advantage of the inherent flexibility and agility of server virtualization. EqualLogic – EqualLogic’s storage area networks enable fast, flexible storage setup and provisioning while dramatically reducing the time and cost required to manage, maintain and grow a SAN environment – locally or remotely. Combining the fact that iSCSI storage is becoming a hot growth market and EqualLogic is optimized for virtualization, the company recently announced it was being acquired by Dell. PlateSpin – PlateSpin is perhaps best known as a P2V solution provider. The company is perhaps one of the oldest third-party virtualization application vendors still around. Their PowerConvert tool is now an “Anywhere-to-Anywhere” solution, migrating workloads between physical and virtual machines. PowerRecon helps provide intelligence for planning datacenter initiatives by collecting inventory and utilization metrics across the infrastructure. And now they offer Forge, a physical appliance to help provide disaster recovery in the event of downtime or a site disaster. Marathon Technologies – everRun completely synchronizes two standard Windows servers including the OS, application, network interfaces, storage, and data. Unlike cluster or failover solutions that require two fully configured systems, everRun creates a single Windows environment that operates like a standalone server. Their software prevents interruptions and downtime by fully automating fault management. Blue Lane Technologies – Blue Lane can secure unpatched datacenter applications immediately while patching them on a schedule of your own choosing, boosting data center availability and security. Unpatched servers and VMs can be secured from network attacks at the push of a button. It also protects VMs and servers against known vulnerabilities in which vendors have yet to issue a patch and allows security teams to enforce policies (beyond patch emulation) that includes locking down individual servers/VMs from remote attacks. Reflex Security – Reflex Security’s Virtual Security Appliance (VSA) creates a virtual security infrastructure inside a physical host machine. And it applies multiple network security and policy enforcement controls to protect virtual machines, virtualized networks and the underlying host and virtualization platform. It can also safeguard communications between virtual components and resources outside the host machine providing a complete security perimeter around and between virtual machines and reduces the risk of virtual machine intrusion, infection, compliance violations or other consequences.While this list does have 10 really good virtualization vendors to watch in 2008, I imagine it was difficult to create such a list. Why? There are so many different vendors out there right now in this space, all with interesting technology and viewpoints on how to solve different trouble areas and each offering additional features and functionality that helps to fill in holes or meet new and expanded use cases.So, what’s on your list? What virtualization companies or technologies are you planning to watch out for in 2008? Software Development