Nemertes Impact Analysis

The Impact Analysis is a weekly quick-take on breaking IT news. 
Nemertes provides expert insight on how recent IT news affects you.

Sign up to receive the Nemertes Impact Analysis or register for access to free web site content.

YAHP? Red Hat Releases, Yes, Another Hypervisor Platform!

Red Hat's (NYSE:RHT) new embeddable hypervisor platform, oVirt, fits a
stripped-down Linux and the open source KVM hypervisor module into 64M,
embeddable in servers just like Citrix's (NASDAQ:CTXS) XenServer and VMare's
(NYSE:VMW) ESXi.

Most participants in Nemertes' Service Oriented Architectures and
Applications benchmark are willing to consider open source, preferably with
solid vendor support, for key infrastructure. Red Hat won't abandon Xen (and
undercut the value of vendor support) but clearly wants to balance it with a
platform not so closely associated with a competitor.

Impacts:

Enterprises: Using KVM-based virtualization? Rejoice, its utility and support
just increased. Liking Xen? Expect a Xen-based equivalent from Red Hat soon.

Vendors: Follow Red Hat's lead: make core technology integrations
architecture neutral so you can swap in new bases as they arise -- or as old
ones lose luster.

Investors: Other post-Citrix flight Xen avoidance should increase user and
partner interest in other open-source virtualization platform vendors such as
Qumranet (privately held).

http://www.redhat.com/about/news/prarchive/2008/virtualization.html

http://www.nemertes.com/benchmarks/nemertes_benchmark_service_oriented_architectures_and_applications_0

John Burke, Principal Research Analyst