Sun is taking their desktop virtualization solution to market with help from the OEM community, which includes the likes of Avanquest Software, Q-layer, and Zenith InfoTech Sun Microsystems has been creating virtualization solutions for quite some time now with its LDOMs and Solaris Containers, but the company has only recently entered the x86 hardware virtualization market. And recently, Sun made a huge push in the desktop virtualization market by signing a number of OEM deals with its xVM VirtualBox technology.VirtualBox was acquired in February from innotek, a German company that has been developing virtualization technology since 2001. The first rebranded version of VirtualBox was released a few months later, and Sun quickly received over 5 million downloads of the freely distributed desktop virtualization solution. Sun hopes that xVM VirtualBox will ultimately become an onramp for users to migrate up to xVM server virtualization once they become familiar with the product and its interface. This is a similar approach that VMware has successfully used with its Workstation and Server products — ultimately leading people to the more powerful and enterprise-class ESX product. VirtualBox is free, open source, and a very small download, which makes it extremely suitable for OEMs to use it as an embedded platform in their own technology offerings.The first new OEM is Avanquest Software. Avanquest will produce and publish Sun xVM VirtualBox bundled with OpenSolaris and sell it via retail outlets in the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Spain, and France. Beginning this fall, Avanquest will provide Mac users with a solution to run the Windows operating system through Sun xVM VirtualBox. The next OEM is Q-layer, a Mountain View, Calif.-based company providing cloud computing through Virtual Private Data Centers (VPDC). They are leveraging Sun xVM VirtualBox to deliver complete datacenter virtualization capabilities for its customers. And finally, headquartered in Bombay, India, is Zenith InfoTech, a managed services infrastructure and business continuity solution provider, that has built its network-attached storage appliance for SMBs using Sun xVM VirtualBox. It will be interesting to watch Sun’s long-term strategy to see if they can effectively position their free desktop virtualization offering against competitive products from VMware and Parallels. Software Development