Once again, we see the tremendous punch a combination of an open source hypervisor together with ConVirt packs in terms of both flexibility and value. We are delighted to see the increasing number of customers recognizing that expensive, proprietary solutions no longer represent the best solution for their complex and ever evolving needs.

Read the full article here.

His topic: Managing complexity: The next great frontier for cloud computing. Arsalan’s talk will address the fact that now that we have virtual, physical and cloud environments all pulling various duties in various capacities in the datacenter, are we truly prepared to manage the complexity that comes with these disparate modes of enterprise computing?

With apologies to Mark Twain: “Everybody talks about cloud computing, but nobody says anything about complexity .”

Well, we will be talking about it and we invite you to join us in the discussion. Arsalan will be talking at 2:45 PM as part of the “Enterprise Cloud Computing” track.

See you in Santa Clara.

We always knew that KVM and Xen represented a compelling alternative to VMware’s proprietary and locked hypervisor. We have many users and customers who are taking advantage of open source’s ability to provide a free platform on which to build out a virtual datacenter before committing to it. As a result, KVM and Xen make it into production from the outside margins of many companies and work their way in.

What these stories also tell us is that VMware’s pricing is so scary for businesses that change is also coming from the inside of enterprises. IT managers are now considering ripping and replacing VMware with open source. Clearly, the cost/benefit/performance analysis that people are doing demonstrate an ROI that justifies abandoning VMware’s ongoing license fees and adapting KVM and Xen.

As the ecosystem, management tools and support for the KVM and Xen hypervisors continue to grow and improve, performance differentiations with VMware will become increasingly irrelevant and IT managers will be able to judge based simply on what is delivering the best VALUE to their organization.

The compass is pointing unmistakably toward open source.

According to Jason:

The cloud-building functionality in ConVirt Enterprise Cloud is simpler to configure, particularly with third-party clouds, which requires little more than entering one’s cloud service credentials to get up and running.

He concludes:

“As a lower-cost alternative to vSphere, ConVirt is certainly worth IT consideration.”

Jason did a great job putting the early Covirt release candidate through its paces. Inevitably however, given the sheer number and depth of the innovative new features in ConVirt Enterprise Cloud, there are several areas that Jason probably did not have space to write about.

Most important amongst these is our game-changing Virtualized-to-Cloud conversion capability that allows an administrator to simply point to an existing part of the data center and turn it into a private Cloud!

Don’t worry about missing out though. Head on over to our ConVirt Enterprise Cloud product page to read more about our V2C and other new features.

Then hit up the feature highlight videos in our new Media Gallery to actually see all this cool new stuff in action!     (hint – the V2C part of the Enterprise Cloud demo is an aboslute MUST SEE!).

Have fun viewing the videos and drop us a line here or via twitter.

In the meantime, Jason has just blogged describing his impressions part way into the review and, most interestingly, has asked for input from everyone on any specific areas you are particularly interested in and would like to see tested.

You can read Jason’s blog post here.

So, don’t be shy. Drop eWeek a note or comment, tell them what you’d like to see tested, and help them get you the answers to your burning questions!