Cross-vendor virtual machine management is another level of complexity awaiting new automation tools. SWsoft, a supplier of virtualization software, said in August that it's extending its Virtuozzo virtual machine management product to manage virtual machines from other vendors. Tools to manage VMware will be added later this year, and XenSource's Xen, an open source virtual machine generator, will be next. SWsoft is backed by investments from Intel Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, and Insight Venture Partners.
IBM acquired application virtualization technology in June with its purchase of privately held Meiosys. The company's MetaCluster 3.0 has been used to demonstrate the transfer of an Oracle database from one server to another without an apparent disruption in service. IBM is expected to add MetaCluster technology to its Tivoli system management software later this year.
Newcomer OpenCountry offers a systems management console that includes tools to generate virtual machines under Linux. It can produce VMs running different distributions, including RedFlag Linux from China, Red Hat's Fedora, and the Debian Project's Debian Linux. In September, OpenCountry became part of the Open Management Consortium, started earlier year to set standards for systems management for open source software, including the operation of virtual machines.
Even with new tools, it isn't easy to master all the moving parts. Ty Schwab, information services analyst for Lane County IT in Eugene, Ore., found that moving to application virtualization presents high hurdles. He recently tested Softricity's ZeroTouch and Altiris' Wise Package Studio. "You practically have to be a Ph.D. to use Softricity," he says.
Softricity, acquired by Microsoft in July, is noted for its ability to virtualize Microsoft applications. Microsoft plans to produce its own version of the product but hasn't provided a timetable.
Schwab is now streaming an application into one county department, using Altiris to virtualize it and AppStream to convert it into an online service. But he's far from convinced that virtualization will sweep through all county applications.
Lane County is adopting virtualization, like other organizations, to save money, Schwab says. But "application virtualization is not mature enough yet." He will extend it to the county applications that have the fewest concurrent users and lowest risk. "The Sheriff's Department has mission-critical applications. If they go down because of virtualization, it does more harm than good."
That's how businesses feel about most of their applications, and they'll be slow to adopt new techniques and technologies that can't guarantee uptime. Virtualization of servers has proved its worth in many data centers. It will be some time before the same can be said about virtualized applications.
