Earlier this year I blogged some predictions and called 2007 the year for Virtualization. Not a very aggressive prediction given what is going on in the industry, but it doesn't make it any less accurate. But in order to get to this point, the seeds had to be sown many years ago.

In early 2000, Egenera started with a blank piece of paper and an idea on how to make computing simpler. We didn’t set out to be a "virtualization company"; rather, we set out to solve a real problem – complexity in the data center (our founder, Vern Brownell, was the CTO of Goldman Sachs). Virtualization became the means to the end. Abstracting the hardware became the only logical way to decrease complexity and increase flexibility, which was another early design goal. It didn’t hurt that many of us came from mainframe backgrounds and understood the power that this abstraction layer would deliver.

And while we were very successful in creating a simpler approach through virtualization, the rest of the industry didn’t catch on. This might sound arrogant - but it's absolutely true. In the early days, most thought we were a blade server company and lumped us in with all of the other blade guys (remember RLX or FiberCycle?). In reality, we are anything but a blade company. Blades are a convenient form factor with some interesting benefits but in and of themselves, they don’t solve the complexity problem we set out to solve 7 years ago. Yes, we've been around 7 years and have had customers in full production for 6.

Why am I giving this history lesson? Because virtualization is real and is here today. In fact, it may be the most important technology in the systems/server space in over a decade (maybe more!). And with VMware’s IPO looming, it is about to get even more buzz.

Another interesting point - for us at least - is that the industry is starting to catch on to what Egenera figured out years ago. Virtualization simplifies server management, and specifically, that IO virtualization is key. The large vendors like IBM and HP thought they had figured this out by placing fiber channel and Ethernet switches into blade chassis, but all that did was complicate matters by having server admins bring unauthorized networking gear in to the data center.

Recently, HP has edged a bit closer with a new piece of networked hardware called “Virtual Connect”. It leverages some innovation called NPIV that virtualizes the HBA association with its server, allowing world-wide-names to be changed without changing the SAN fabric. This is a step in the right direction, though the lack of integration with management software does not solve the complexity problem, and in fact may make it worse.

Additionally, we’ve seen a number of startups emerge from stealth mode and claim to be “Egenera like” in their design. These are basically IO virtualization engines that help to simplify IO connectivity and consolidate IO ports – stuff Egenera has been doing for years. Literally.

All of these are interesting developments and are good for the customer, but they are incremental point solutions offered in an un-integrated fashion and may cause the customer more pain in the end. The real magic of Egenera was staying the course on the original company vision, while at the same time using Virtualization to create an integrated architecture that delivered on the founding goal of simpler server management at dramatically lower costs.

We got it right the first time.

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