Open Source Virtualization

By Dawn M. Foster (91 posts) on December 8, 2009 at 8:00 am

Over the past couple of months, we've been focusing on cloud computing and virtualization for the Open Source at Intel website. As we near the end of this focus topic, I wanted to quickly review some of the highlights and talk more about virtualization trends.

We've done a number of interviews with Intel employees who are key contributors to open source virtualization projects like Xen and KVM: Li Xin, Susie Li, Allen Kay, Donald Dugger, Eddie Dong and Wilfred Yu. A number of other blog posts have also focused on virtualization topics: video of Simon Crosby talking about Xen Server and cloud computing; Red Hat virtualization platform for servers and clouds; Red Hat and Microsoft partner on virtualization; and the intersection of open source, cloud computing and virtualization.

Nicole Lewis at Computerworld recently wrote a great article about open source virtualization. She talks about how the market share of open source virtualization is small right now, but it is growing and is important for certain segments of the market. According to Alan Dayley, a Gartner Group research director, "Open source is less than 5% of the overall server-virtualization revenue market share, but could nearly double by 2012." Cloud computing is a huge potential market for open source virtualization, according to IDC analyst Gary Chen, since cloud computing providers often have very specific needs, and being able to modify open source virtualization solutions can help them meet those needs.

We've spent quite a bit of time recently talking about the intersection between virtualization and cloud computing, which allows both established companies and startups to easily deploy new solutions on existing virtualized cloud architectures, like Amazon's EC2, without spending a fortune. Open source virtualization, like Xen, which is used by Amazon's EC2, is a critical piece of many cloud solutions. This is one of the reasons that Ubuntu and Eucalyptus have recently embraced it.

In the video below, Doug Fisher, Intel VP Software & Services Group, says, "Virtualization is a great example where we work aggressively in the open source community to deliver a solution in time to market with our platform technologies."

Virtualization is an important technology, and it will continue to be important, especially as people move more and more solutions into the cloud. Open source virtualization solutions, like Xen and KVM, will continue to be an important part of these solutions for many companies.

Categories: Manageability & Security, Open Source
Tags: , , ,

For more complete information about compiler optimizations, see our Optimization Notice.

Comments (0)

Trackbacks (7)


Leave a comment  

To obtain technical support, please go to Software Support.
Name (required)*

Email (required; will not be displayed on this page)*

Your URL (optional)


Comment*