SYS-CON Events announced today that Mike Neil, general manager for virtualization strategy at Microsoft will deliver the keynote speech, entitled "Virtualization Futures: From the Desktop to the Datacenter," at SYS-CON’s upcoming “International Virtualization Conference & Expo 2008 West” event due to take place November 19-21, 2008, in San Jose California.

Join Microsoft General Manager Mike Neil for this keynote as he shares his thoughts on the state of IT computing and tomorrow’s trends, and how Microsoft is helping to transform the traditional desktop and datacenter. Mike will discuss directions for Microsoft’s virtualization and management technologies, and the related applications and infrastructure that will make IT stronger, leaner, and more strategic. He'll demo yet-to-be released products so that you can see what Microsoft is developing. Learn how you can implement Microsoft's solutions today to achieve consolidation, business continuity, accelerated desktop deployments, as well as where Microsoft is headed.

Mike Neil is general manager for virtualization strategy in the Windows Server Division at Microsoft Corp in Redmond, Wash. He is focused on the delivery of the Windows virtualization technology, including Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, Microsoft Hyper-V Server and Virtual PC 2007. Mike also directs the technical enablement of Microsoft’s broader vision for virtualization, to include virtualization management tools and virtualized desktop infrastructure. Prior to this role, he was responsible for Microsoft’s server and PC virtualization efforts since 2003.

Neil joined Microsoft as part of Microsoft’s February 2003 acquisition of Connectix Corp. While at Connectix, he was the vice president of engineering and worked on the original team that developed Virtual PC Mac, allowing Apple Macintosh computers to run Windows. He also was one of the founders of Pixo, a small company that developed operating systems and applications for handheld devices, the most notable of which is the Apple iPod.

After attending the University of Michigan, Neil joined Apple culminating as the integration lead and technical lead for Apple’s OS project code named Copeland.

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Virtualization is becoming an increasingly important concept, not only to IT staffs, but to CIOs and line-of-business managers as well. It is quickly being deployed in server, storage, networking, as well as client environments.

"Deploying Virtualization in the Enterprise" is the conference theme of SYS-CON's 4th International Virtualization Conference & Expo.