"We're not ready to swallow either side of this story and believe that virtualization will have little impact on overall server purchases."

You cannot be serious, Ashlee. Surely they are ITs Mutually Assuring Driver Element/Component/Program?

>>We're not ready to swallow either side of this story and >>believe that virtualization will have little impact on overall >>server purchases.

Hmmm, I think virtualisation is going to have an impact. For example, our company was thinking of buying 20 servers. However, after our investigation into VMWare and similar products we decided to only buy 8 servers. All of them run virtual machines and it seems to far better to maintain and to upgrade.

Maybe Sun needs to start dealing with VMWare and produce something that will improve their revenue and offer competitive products.

But are VMWare improving your revenue, Mahesh, without taking a great chunk of it. That is true Virtualisation..added value with the new added value part paying for the Virtualisation/Virtualised Elementals and not just hitching a ride on the previous core business via a proxy consolidation program. Virtualisation presents a methodology for quite literally, unlimited growth as it transfers the business field into a Free Play Zone which has no barriers, only endless opportunities. ...... which is what the Sun ethic is all about too, is it not?

But you appear to be happy enough, Mahesh, which is well played VMWare.

Dude,

Sun sell a range of x86 based systems that run VMWare products quiet happily. Moreover, VMWare supports Solaris 10 as a guest OS.

'Course, this does work not on their Sparc systems, but there's more than one way to get virtualisation; zones (Solaris 10), logical domains (T1000/T2000) and physical domains on the Enterprise class servers.