David Greschler, the virtualization boss of Microsoft delivered the opening keynote at the first annual Virtualization Conference & Expo.. with his opening statement: "Virtualization is the key enabler for SOA!" He later demonstrated this on stage.

In his keynote he demonstrated various live applications of the use of virtualization, real-time and based on policy.

Greschler is a director of System Center marketing, and is focused on virtualization management tools for the desktop and datacenter. Greschler came to Microsoft with the July 2006 acquisition of Softricity. Prior to joining Microsoft, Greschler was co-Founder of Softricity, developers of SoftGrid and the originator and leading vendor of the application virtualization industry. With more than 20 years of pioneering experience in the computer field, Greschler has held various positions at the MIT Media Lab and The Computer Museum, and holds numerous virtualization patents.

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Third International "Virtualization Conference & Expo" Call for Papers Now Open
Virtualization, the hottest subject in all IT right now, will be center stage in New York City - 23-24 June, 2008, at the next conference and expo in the SYS-CON Events' third international Virtualization Conference & Expo.

Key opinion-formers in the field of infrastructure and pioneers of virtualization technologies of all types have already begun submitting speaking proposals to Virtualization Conference & Expo 2008 East, being held in New York City, 23-24 June, 2008. Topics covered will range from Application Virtualization, Desktop Virtualization, Network Virtualization, Server Virtualization, and Storage Virtualization, to Virtual Machine Automation, Physical to Virtual (P2V) Migration, Management Applications, Tools and Utilities, and Virtualization Scripts and Procedures.

Submissions on these and dozens of other topics have already begun streaming in. The Call for Papers is as always a 100% online process, found here.

IDC has stated that the virtualization services market alone is going to reach $11.7 billion by 2011 and in general this technology, which has been around for a good number of years, seems suddenly to be on everyone's mind.

In short, Virtualization is fast becoming a key requirement for every server in the data center, enabling increased workloads in server consolidation projects, efficient software development and testing, resource management for dynamic data centers, application re-hosting and compatibility, and high-availability partitions.