First speaker today at VMworld 2006 is Mendel Rosenblum VMware’s Chief Scientist and Co-founder.

Mendel is showing a VMware Workstation prototype that supports something he called VMware log replay. Using Microsoft Paint to create a drawing, he speaks and depicts a situation where the application may crash. Next he begins a log replay which replays the exact session as it was created live. This has far reaching effects from a development and debugging, forensics, software support, etc…

With the emergence of technologies such as this and virtual appliances reduced deployment times by leveraging VMware, increased reliability, reduced support costs, etc… are now becoming a reality. Virtual appliances hold the promise of becoming a defacto preferred methodology of application distribution. Users who choose to deeply a virtual appliance as an alternative to traditional physical application deployment could benefit from significantly reduced deployment times, increased reliability via hared environments optimized by the application vendor, reduced support costs and the list goes on and on. Virtual Appliances and VMware truly have the ability to revolutionize the software distribution paradigm we have all become accustomed to.