Heavy focus the evolution toward the virtual infrastructure.  Today x86 virtualization is leading the charge but we are moving towards a virtual infrastructure – Does this remind anyone of the the “Utility Computing Discussion that the emergence of the SAN (Storage Area Network) drove?  Having just returned from VMworld 2006 where VMware talked about virtualization as a revolution and now sitting at Gartner Data Center Conference 2006 listening to the first keynote frame much of the conference around virtualization the VMware folks would be very proud.  Another major point discussed was the driving forces behind what Garner calls Real-Time Infrastructe (to be defined in a later post – ironically I defined something I called JiT (Just-in-Time) Infrastructure two years ago for whatever it’s worth.  Gartner defines three driving forces behing the need to move to a Real-Time Infrastructure:

1. Economics
2. QoS (Quality of Service)
3. Agility

I will explain each of these in a follow-up post but it is not hard to see how virtualization is front and center with drivers like these.

Lastly the Gartner analyst talked about how in the future the Hypervisor will become free and the resource management and orchestration will be where the cost will reside.  Interested in you thoughts specifically on this comment – if, when and why?