VMWare Fusion

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VMWare released Fusion, the code name for their Macintosh virtualization product. Over the past few months I have become infatuated with the whole concept of virtualization. One thing most folks don’t realize is that they go out, buy the latest and greatest hardware and its fasters, but it is not actually working the computer very hard. Expecially with the release of dual core or even quad core processors, the hardware you are paying for simply isn’t working to its potential (most of the time). You might be surprised at how fast MS Office would open if you didn’t have to see the opening splash screen.

Anyway, what Fusion allows you to do, is run other “machines” in a window. For example, on my MacBookPro, I have the best of both worlds. I run MS Windows in a window for our credit card processing requirements. So I can still use my all time favorite operating system (OS X), why still being able to get paid by our customers (which requires windows). See the screen shot below.

A lot of folks are already utilizing this same technology in their server infrastructures…so instead of needing 10 servers at 15k a pop, they can have 5 servers or less. I think we will start to see virtualization as more mainstream for smaller environments.