Gartner Says Virtualization Is Hot, So It Must Be True
When it comes to reputation, Gartner is as well-respected as the pope, John
McCain and Mother Teresa put together -- despite the fact that a decade ago,
Gartner overestimated the cost of owning PCs by about ten-fold. It seems that
somehow the gurus from Stamford, Conn. can do no wrong.
In the case
of virtualization, Gartner is mostly right, but I have a few bones to pick.
First, Gartner says that through 2012, virtualization is the "highest-impact
trend in [the] infrastructure and operations market." Check.
Then, the company's press release argues that "storage has already been
virtualized" and that PCs and servers are the next frontier. Technically,
that may be true; folks have been talking about storage virtualization longer
than x86 PC or server virtualization. But how many have actually virtualized
their storage? Precious and few.
Yet another Gartner guru claims that because of PC virtualization, "the
days of the monolithic, general-purpose operating system will soon be over."
Right. Wasn't the Network Computer (a style of PC or desktop virtualization)
supposed to kill the PC a decade ago? Wasn't the Web supposed to kill Windows
clients five years ago? Like the end of the world, if you predict it long enough,
it will eventually happen.
Have you virtualized your storage, and if so, how? Write me at [email protected]
and I'll pass your story along in our next newsletter.
Posted by Doug Barney on April 07, 2008