Quoting CIO.com 

Virtualization could hardly be hotter as a trend, yet virtualization management and security tools are still in their infancy. At first, it defies logic.

But CIOs on the front lines of virtualization efforts know the reality of the problem: VMs can be deployed in minutes, which is a big advantage on the tactical side—and a big worry on the management side.

After initial virtualization deployments wowed business people with their ability to save money and speed up processes like IT provisioning, the number of VMs quickly escalated in enterprises. Issues like balancing workloads on virtualized servers and tracking all those VMs became much more important. The big vendors in the space, VMware and Xen (now owned by Citrix), were, to some extent, learning along with the customers about the everyday management headaches and concerns.

Only as more of those worries arose did rival companies come knocking on CIOs' doors with products designed to provide a comprehensive look at the virtualized data center, manage it and protect it.

Sure, VMware and Citrix/Xen have their own management tools. But who are the other key companies innovating in this area? We talked to CIOs and industry analysts to narrow down a list of ten virtualization management and security vendors that should be on any IT leader's radar screen in 2008.

Selected are:

1. CiRBA

2. Vizioncore

3. Akorri

4. PlatformComputing

5. Embotics

6. EqualLogic

7. PlateSpin

8. Marathon Technologies

9. Blue Lane

10. Reflex Security

Congratulations to all!  Read the entire original article to find out more from CIO, here.