For those of you in attendance, I hope you were able to make it to both days of the forum. Day 1 offered a lot of insight into the how and why of virtualization. And day 2 looked to be ready to capitalize on that momentum and continue to run the course for those able to make the second day.

Party

At the conclusion of day 1, Novell sponsored an evening cocktail and networking reception in the grand ballroom. The mixer had a good turnout, and there was no shortage of food or drink. Tables were setup with the usual cocktail party foods, and there were servers walking around offering up a number of different food items. With two bar areas setup, it was quite easy to get a drink refill and continue having good conversation. Everyone there seemed to have a really good time. But one individual started the party off on a much higher note - if you signed up for a drawing at Novell's exhibit booth, you had a chance to win a slick looking, green laptop computer running Novell SUSE Linux. Unfortunately for me, I didn't win... but I was still able to have a good time along with everyone else.

The Keynote

I thought the keynote presentations on day 1 were done extremely well. Each one offered valuable insight and presented the technologies and value of virtualization in a clear and concise manner so that everyone in the room could understand. I wasn't sure how they could top it, or even come close.

Andi Mann, Senior Analyst from Enterprise Management Associates, put on quite a presentation. If you weren't sure of the different areas or approaches of virtualization before the presentation started, you certainly walked out of the ballroom with a much better handle on where we are and where we are headed after the presentation concluded. The discussion detailed how many of these areas are approaching significant maturity, while other areas are only now starting to energize the market. Throughout the discussion, he spoke about how these techniques are providing significant benefits in many areas, but also kept it real by saying that these same virtualization techniques also pose new and unique challenges that have to be met. Again, like the previous keynotes, I highly recommend you download Andi Mann's slide presentation for more information.

The Sessions

Unfortunately, I was not able to stay until the conclusion of the forum. However, I did get a chance to see Paul Venezia's two panel discussions that took us through the process of a physical to virtual implementation. To set the stage, Paul introduced the audience to his "faux company" and we were walked through the process of how they should migrate from a traditional IT world to one powered by a virtualization solution. It was an interesting way to get the discussion going, and also helped the audience put things into perspective as they go through some of the same pain points.

The discussion was broken up into two sessions. The first session covered the planning stages and went into specifics such as skillset needed, software licensing issues, performance and resource utilization metrics, and hardware platform requirements and considerations. The second session continued with the topic but this time focusing on the deployment side. The panel talked about their challenges and the pitfalls that can be avoided, and they discussed the different tools that are now available to help with a P2V migration. If you haven't already gone through this process, these panel experts definitely gave the audience a lot of food for thought to take back with them.

Conclusion

Each day, InfoWorld provided a questionnaire sheet and asked that the attendees fill them out and turn them back in. Hopefully, many of you were able to do just that. While I certainly enjoyed myself, learned new things, found new products, met new people and had interesting conversation... the forum was for you. It was for you to gain a better understanding of this whole virtualization notion, where does it fit within your organization? What can it do for you? And which solution will work best for you and the way you do business? It is important to get your feedback on things like this so that next year's forum can be even better.

For those of you that spoke with me, thank you. I sincerely enjoyed hearing about your products, ideas and implementation stories as well as seeing your enthusiasm for a technology that I love. I hope to see you again next year.

If you have any thoughts about the show and want to share them with me, you can either post them here for all to read, or drop me an email. I'd love to chat more about it.

Posted by David Marshall on September 28, 2006 06:17 AM