Every year Windows IT Pro magazine talks with hundreds of vendors, attends dozens of product demos and reviews some of the best products out in the Windows market. All the products the Windows IT Pro staff has identified can help IT professionals do their jobs faster and more efficiently. This year we are pleased to announce that everRun VM has been chosen as a bronze winner in the virtualization category. Here’s what our CEO Gary Philips had to say:

“Given all of the innovative virtualization companies considered for this award, we are honored to be named a Windows IT Pro Editors’ Best Award winner in the virtualization category. This award is the tenth industry award we have received in the past year, a testament to the importance and value of what we are doing to help companies reduce costs and ensure the availability of their applications.”

Other winners in our category include Parallels Virtuozzo Containers (gold winner) and VMware ThinApp (silver winner).

With Microsoft’s Hyper-V announcement a few weeks back, the buzz around virtualization continues to rise. In this Network World podcast, our CTO Jerry Melnick discusses what Microsoft’s announcement means for the virtualization industry. Jerry believes that Microsoft’s moves will bring virtualization within reach of many companies who have been hesitant about adopting it before now – giving Microsoft the opportunity to swim in uncharted waters where VMware hasn’t been able to go.

The podcast also highlights Jerry’s take on the thriving virtualization industry and how the growing virtualization ecosystem is creating solutions that “fill in the blanks” e.g. everRun VM allows customers of all sizes to “consolidate with confidence” with reliable availability for virtual servers.

Do you think availability is a critical factor for a successful virtualization deployment?

As demand rises for IT managers and C-level executives to embrace virtualization, we thought it would be worthwhile to share our insights into adopting server virtualization. The tips below are designed to help companies determine if server virtualization is right for them and how they should prepare to ensure a successful initial implementation.

Tip #1 – Make the business case for server virtualization

Before implementing server virtualization, IT executives should assess whether the technology will provide a reasonable return on investment. They should first take a look at how they are using servers today and ask themselves:

• Do they have common applications running on a number of different servers?
• Do they have enough servers that could and should be consolidated? Is the number of applications increasing and the capacity required for the applications continuing to expand?
• Do they expect the number of servers they have to buy each year to increase? If so, by how much?
• Is the business planning to undertake other large-scale technology implementations, and if so, how will this fit with a possible virtualization development?

In short, the IT department has to make a strong business case and justify the virtualization investment to ensure executive management support. To help conduct a quick assessment, ROI calculators are available from VMware and Marathon. Marathon also has a webinar available with John Humphreys, Program Vice President, Virtualization Software for IDC, “Making the Business Case for Server Virtualization,” in which John provides essential guidance in making your business case.

Tip #2 – Consider the license and support implications

IT managers need investigate what, if any, impact virtualization will have on their application licenses and support. Depending on the application, the original licensing terms and conditions may no longer apply after the applications have been migrated to the virtualized environment. In addition, it may be that the providers of some of the software applications do not support virtualization systems, and are unwilling to offer technical support for the applications after the migration to a virtualized environment.

Tip #3 – Afford to spend the time to plan

As any IT professional knows, implementing a new system requires dedicated resources, budget and time. Industry experts have estimated that the planning stage constitutes 90% of a virtualization implementation project. The actual migration is relatively simple to undertake provided that the implementation has been well-planned. Any system information to be migrated should be collated and backed-up up to six months before the start of the migration. IT managers should remember to assess how much hardware each virtual machine needs in order to operate efficiently. They also need to ensure that the number of virtual environments residing in a single hardware does not sprawl out of control - this could have serious consequences on the stability of the environment and application availability. A thorough implementation plan will help businesses minimize any hiccups that might arise.

Tip #4 – Assess levels of application availability and risk to business continuity

Despite the many benefits of virtualization, businesses are beginning to realize that there are risks associated with the technology. While virtualization is useful for protecting applications from planned downtime, protecting virtual environments from unplanned downtime is a different matter. Today, the cost of just a few minutes of unplanned downtime can be hugely detrimental and with virtual environments the risk is greater because server consolidation often results in a single point of failure for multiple applications. Businesses should therefore consider a solution that combines virtualization technology with the high availability protection necessary to keep the business going through disruptions.

Tip #5 – Demonstrate that virtualization won’t impact end users

After the implementation, it is critical to demonstrate to executive management that virtualization can be accomplished without hindering applications performance and without diminishing service to end users. IT managers should monitor closely the performance of initial deployments, and if necessary, modify hardware and networking configurations to ensure that the virtual environment is completely transparent to end-users.

Emerging virtualization technologies are opening doors by removing existing barriers of entry such as cost and complexity. More and more businesses of different sizes are starting to reap the benefits of server virtualization. But, before embarking on a virtualization project, organizations should assess their needs carefully, choose the right technology, make sure the implementation doesn’t impact end user performance - and start small.

If you have additional tips or recommendations that have helped you and your organization successfully deploy server virtualization, please leave a comment here and join the discussion!

A common question we get from analysts and something that continues to come up in discussions (see Brian Madden’s blog) is why we developed everRun VM for XenSource and not VMware. One of the biggest obstacles in developing a version of our software for protecting virtual environments was making a strategic decision on which hypervisor platform to develop for initially. Some of the key factors that weighed in on our decision were:

• Virtualization platform market share
• Robustness of the virtualization platform
• Performance of the virtualization platform
• Openness of the architecture
• Virtualization vendor’s approach to partnerships
• Compatibility with future Microsoft virtualization platforms

Although VMware was the clear market leader, for most of the criteria, XenSource (now Citrix Virtualization and Management Division) was a much better fit. To acheive the superior availability that everRun VM uniquely provides, it had to be tightly integrated with the hypervisor, the openness of the architecture was very important. And since our solution would be directed at virtualizing applications that weren’t being virtualized yet, in part due to concerns about their performance in virtual machines, the near “bare-metal” performance of XenServer was also a major advantage. XenSource’s philosophy of growing through an ecosystem of technology partners gave us the confidence that they would get the technical, management and marketing support required to achieve our time-to-market objectives. Finally, because of the company’s relationship with Microsoft and the planned interoperability between the XenServer platform and Microsoft’s Hyper-V, we are confident that developing for XenServer now would provide the shortest path to supporting Microsoft Hyper-V when it becomes available.

If you have any additional questions feel free to leave us a comment.

We all know that the “buzzword” of 2008 is virtualization and that CIO’s are rifling through piles of information to determine the best fit for their organization. But what about companies like Citrix and VMware who produce the virtual environments? What are their plans for 2008?

Tarry Singh discusses some of his predictions for the industry here. What’s interesting to note is his foresight into the HA market and the growing need for player’s in the industry, like VMware, to utilize virtualization management applications as enhancements to their existing systems. Check out this post which highlights visions for 2008 from Simon Crosby (Citrix) and Dr. Mendel Roseblum (VMware).

Bill Murray’s character said it best in What About Bob, “Baby Steps” – In case you missed it, this week we announced our partnership with ADN, the largest Citrix distributor in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA). ADN specializes in thin-client technologies. By incorporating the XenServer hypervisor and Marathon’s fault tolerant-class availability, ADN can now provide full-thin client packages for enterprises and medium sized companies.

How are we one step closer to VMWare? According to the folks at ADN, they are in the process of selling the XenServer Enterprise virtualization platform in the EMEA market – a market where VMWare has decided they are not looking to extend their current reseller base. This puts ADN in a prime position to work with the majority of EMEA companies that have not yet adopted virtualization, putting both Marathon and Citrix at their fingertips.

Read the full release here.

September has been a whirlwind of activity for the Virtualization and High Availability space…

• The success of VMworld (which saw attendance increase to 11,000 from 7,000 last year according to Allesandro Perilli at Virtualization.Info)
• AppCon 2007 to discuss the needs of mid-market IT Professionals responsible for assuring high availability and disaster recovery of business-critical applications
• And more importantly, the glamorous stuff that comes with a growing industry… Like TV Appearances (Gary Phillips on NECN) and Magazine Interviews (Steve Keilen in Processor Magazine)

It’s been a great month in terms of connecting with the best and brightest and discussing the future of the Industry. Every day we encounter news coverage and blog postings that provide an inside look into how the space is evolving and the opportunities that exist to improve the way we all do business.

For example, David Marshall’s post on VMblog discussing IDC’s report on the migration to next generation platforms in Asia/Pacific and Japan. As Virtualization grows in popularity and adoption levels increase, priorities will change based on the size of the organization, technological needs, and geographic region to name just a few.

We’re all continuing to learn what’s important and why when adopting Virtualization technology. That’s why these events, conversations and the activity this month are so important… it’s not just about the TV and Magazine coverage.

VMworld 2007 has come and gone leaving us with many positive insights for the future of the industry. Michael Bilancieri, our Director of Products, attended the event and was rather impressed with the turnout as well as the growth in the “virtual eco system.”

As like last year, the business continuity, disaster recovery and high-availability protection-related sessions were well over sold and left many people unable to attend, indicating that this is one of the most prolific topics on the minds of customers.

The folks at VMware demo’d their R&D continuous availability project which was met with oohs and aahs from the audience clearly validating the need for solutions like this in the market. Continuous availability, or more specifically fault-tolerant availability in a virtual environment in Marathons’ case, is no small feat.

Interestingly enough Michael did have a conversation with an end-user industry veteran that stopped by our booth (seen below). He had been perusing the show and said that the everRun technology showcase was the most innovative thing that he’s seen in quite some time. He went on to say that in the availability/data protection space, innovation is typically incremental and is relegated to status quo paradigm views of the world.

Other insights come from our friends at XenSource who have done an incredible job enabling the ecosystem as evidenced by the number of software vendors supporting or soon to support XenSource. All in all we want to say kudos to VMware for building this market and opening up this event to all the virtualization players.

Next up: VMworld Europe in Cannes, France