From 2006 to the present, the economy and global interest in virtualization-related issues have undergone a remarkable and rapid evolution; it has become a field of study just as the development of digital cellular telephony once was.

Let’s take a look back at some history:

2003 – EMC Corporation acquired VMware for $635 million, and it was a wise move, given the results.

2003 – Microsoft acquired Connectix for its Virtual PC product, which later became the well-known Virtual Server

2006 – Microsoft acquires Softricity for its SoftGrid application virtualization product

2006 – Citrix acquires Ardence for application virtualization streaming

2007 – Symantec acquires Altiris for its SVS (“Software Virtualization Solution“)

2007 – Citrix acquires XenSource for approximately $500 million, a pittance compared to the true value it brought to Citrix by integrating the XenServer, XenApp, and XenDesktop solutions with its long-established streaming, WAN scaling, and terminal services protocols.

2008 – SUN Microsystems acquired Innotek for its VirtualBox product and to launch the xVM server platform, while maintaining SUN’s well-known open-source philosophy

2008 – SUN Microsystems acquired MySQL for $1 billion, without compromising its open-source philosophy and gaining ground in the $15 billion enterprise database market. At first glance, this move may seem unrelated to virtualization, but SUN’s offering of server and storage hardware with virtualization capabilities is growing stronger , enabling more efficient and cost-effective management of the scalability demands of MySQL database server infrastructures.

2008 – Red Hat acquires Qumranet, the creator of KVM (Kernel Virtual Machine), another hypervisor competing with Xen for the title of highest-performing hypervisor; Red Hat is ready to release the oVirt platform, which, however, still has some very important milestones to reach, one of which is HA (High Availability).

2008 – IBM announces a $350 million investment in infrastructure in Tokyo and North Carolina

2008 – HP, Intel, and Yahoo announce that they are collaborating on a Global Cloud; in our opinion, this all stems from CERN’s Tycoon research.

2009 – SUN Microsystems acquires Q-layer, a Belgian company that developed a comprehensive graphics framework called VPDC (Virtual Private Data Center), capable of designing a complete virtual data center that operates on hardware infrastructure in a fully independent and transparent manner.

Currently, Q-Layer has disappeared from the internet, but we still have all the slides, PDFs, license quotes, and contact information for the management team. Just think—in 2007, several venture capital firms (Wellington Partners, Partech International, and Big Bang Ventures) invested $9 million in that same company.

Future 2009 – Cisco unveils plans to acquire VMware and, in the meantime, is breaking new ground in virtual data centers, collaborating with VMware on Virtual I/O projects, and developing hardware dedicated to virtual networking —the core of the comprehensive Cisco Data Center 3.0 management framework; This would be a massive move, especially when you consider that VMware is currently valued at $10 billion.

Future 2009 – IBM is seeking a massive merger with SUN worth about $6.5 billion. Is it out of fear of Cisco? But what happened to the 2008 investment? IBM does offer cloud computing, but its benefits aren’t clear; perhaps it’s intended for medium- to large-sized businesses.