Along with 7,000 others, I am attending VMWare’s third annual conference! Let me reiterate that number – seven thousand attendees at a conference in its third year!

VMWare is the new cool! The company is so cool they are not only creating industry changing technology, they are also helping in the global movement to conserve energy!

A software company helping with energy conservation – how 21st century is that? At the opening session of VMWorld, PG&E (electric and natural gas provider to northern and central California) announced an energy conservation plan around server consolidation and virtualization. Businesses can receive a credit from PG&E for $750 - $1350 for every server removed. The program caps at $4 million per company!

VMWare is making software that will change the way we use technology. VMWare’s philosophy is to take control of the resources and use what you need, when you need it, and where you need it. VMWare CEO, Diane Greene emphasized the need to change the way the operating system is viewed. She advocated the licensing of software to resources, thus making it more virtual. An example of virtualization for those of us on the pre-deployment side is that of VMWare’s Lab Manager. Lab Manager allows testers to virtually create an environment as close to production as possible and marshal complex software configurations across the lifecycle. This means the days of building and maintaining expensive test labs are gone. The tester can send the developer a URL to pinpoint a problem. The developer can then instantiate an instance of the tester’s environment and work on either solving or deferring the defect.

With their virtual appliances, virtual infrastructure, virtual desktops, and virtual software lifecycle management VMWare is pushing the industry beyond its comfort zone. VMWare is advocating standards established and controlled by third parties and are truly breaking down geographic barriers. And, this technology is just getting started.

If VMWare is a new name to you, put them on your watch list. VMWare is proving that virtualization is not just for the data center.

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