Over the course of the last few weeks the virtualization industry has really emerged in the market. With VMware’s IPO and Citrix’s acquisition of XenSource, the industry is turning heads, forcing CIOs to rethink their current strategies. Bloggers like Om Malik, who posted this article today and Bob Evans of InformationWeek who wrote an interesting piece yesterday discussing the growing need for virtualization, are among the few caught up in the buzz. Evans highlighted an article where his colleague Charlie Babcock describes what sits over the horizon for the market:

“Server virtualization will be followed by desktop virtualization; storage is already virtualized or is well on its way toward being virtualized; network access, network resource management, is or will be virtualized along with these other developments. As most of the data center resources become virtualized, it will be possible to move to new ways of doing things. Virtualization will cease of be a feature of some elements of the data center. Rather, data centers enjoying a high degree of virtualization will be the standard way of doing business.”

The rise of virtualization demands that CIOs consider the availability implications for their systems. If they introduce virtual environments, are they prepared to ensure their systems are available 24/7?

Gary Philps, CEO of Marathon, is actually going to be discussing the need for high availability in virtual environments September 13 at AppCon 2007 in San Jose for those interested. If you are in town we would like to see you there. If you can’t make it drop us a note here with any questions/thoughts you have.