A few months back we acknowledged here on our blog the common misconceptions behind the term “virtualization.” After thinking about it some more, we realized that there are many commonly used terms in the High Availability, Clustering and Disaster Recovery space that could also benefit from some clarification. To alleviate some of the confusion and help standardize the language around Availability, we’ve created a glossary of terms to be housed on our blog (click the Glossary tab). Here, we’ll provide our take on common phrases that will help IT Managers make educated decisions when considering an Availability, Virtualization or Disaster Recovery solution. We encourage you to help us cultivate the glossary by commenting on our definitions, or provide us with your own. The terms identified are just a jumping-off point, so please feel free to suggest other terms you would like to see defined.

The goal of this is to give IT Professionals from CIO’s to IT Managers a place to find clear and consistent definitions, rather than being bamboozled by the disparate “lingo” being thrown around within the industry.

Dan Kusnetzky had an interesting post last week titled “Virtualization – Trend or Buzzword?” Based on our experiences with customers about virtualized infrastructures, we can relate to Dan’s insights on the subject. In their eagerness to tap into the virtualization trend, companies that are a long way from virtualization solutions are creatively renaming products to get on the virtualization bandwagon.

The mainstream market has yet to fully embrace virtualization technologies, and we suspect that market hype and market jargon may be contributing to this. For mass adoption of virtualization to happen, CIOs need to be comfortable that “virtualization solutions” really are virtualizing, and the language used to describe solution features and functions are clear, concise and credible. After all, they are the ones “signing the checks” and they should know what they’re getting.

Hmmmm…maybe a virtualization glossary might help? Stay tuned…