The industry must be moving into the tools and utilities phase of virtualization. Everyday someone introduces a new utility. This could be mostly pre and post VMWorld buzz but there are a lot of new players in the space, and this is a space that seems to have turned “commodity” overnight. Every tool or utility can be had for free somewhere and those that can’t are being integrated into a platform by somebody.

Platform or virtualization services are the only spaces where customer money is left. There will probably be some acquisitions of tool companies to get the investors a return but the platform, VMWare, Microsoft, Xen and even Parallels to some extent are the only true “pay me” plays left until the rest of us come up with a marketable service (besides consulting) to offer.

This week it is VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) which is just a re-visit of the virtual-lab managers we have out there but that’s a whole other thread.

Last week alone we had HP enter:

http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press/2006/061108xa.html

WYSE enter:

http://www.wyse.com/about/news/pr/2006/1107_Pilot.asp

and NEC:

http://www.nec.co.jp/press/en/0611/0601.html

All this on top of the previous weeks Virtual Lab Manager buzz:

Where VMLogix signs in:

http://www.vmlogix.com/company/press_release_2006_11_06.php

With an “oh yeah” by VMWare:

http://www.vmware.com/news/releases/labmanager.html

All this in a space where Surgient pretends to be the only player:

http://www.surgient.com/news/20061002-v5.asp

In a space invented by Microsoft for their partners:

https://training.partner.microsoft.com/plc/ you’ll want to look at what they call Hands-On Labs Online (HOLO).