Systems programming has a new, hip word -- virtualisation. It has captured the hearts of IT professionals in small and large companies with its promise of freedom from the tyranny of hardware.

Think your company has invested in the wrong database technology? Virtualise it. Not happy with the hardware? Virtualise it. Virtualisation offers the promise of running more or less anything, more or less anywhere.

IBM can lay claim to have invented the concept through the virtualisation, which 10 years ago had almost vanished from use. Now it plays a key role in the company's plans for the future. EMC may have stolen the virtual crown with its purchase of the hugely popular VMware, but Big Blue wants to take it back.

ZDNet UK talked to the man charged with guiding this offensive, IBM's vice-president for virtualisation, Richard Lechner, to find out where IBM is going with virtualisation, what benefits it offers customers and if virtualisation is so important to IBM, why did it not buy VMware when they had the chance?