More than a year ago I wrote why I think Small and medium-size business (SMB) are not adapting virtualization, like the big spending organizations. Among the reasons I gave was about Microsoft not being in a position to offer a mature and cost effective solution and the current cost of the technology at the time. I am happy to say things have change since then and virtualization is now affordable for Small and medium-size business.

Citrix Systems and Microsoft have expanded their desktop virtualization partnership to develop an application that enable enterprise customers to manage all Windows desktops and applications through a common platform.

This month LG Electronics will release its new SmartVine N-series monitors with embedded virtualization. The new system will allow the monitors to function as virtual computers allowing multiple users to use the system at the same time.

The virtualization ship has left the dock long time ago and many companies find that they are still standing on the shore. This is my view of many IT companies who haven’t got the resource or time to catch up. They are therefore left with no choice but to acquire those that have gone ahead.

In an effort to keep some customers, happy Microsoft recently announced that the new version on Microsoft Windows – Windows 7 will run in XP mode; Allowing businesses with application that can only run on XP to have to benefit of the application running newer hardware. Sounds like a great idea, but according to the The Enquirer some Intel and AMD chips will not support this mode.

The market for thin client is more open than it was three or more years ago and a lot of us are unsure which thin client to use in our virtual desktop infrastructure. We are also unaware of the options available to us. Based on the feedback from a previous article – Panologic vs. Wyse I have collated a list of thin client manufactures/suppliers. I hope list will act as a thin client guide or somewhere for you to start on your road to VDI (virtual desktop infrastructure) implementation.

Sun Microsystems today annouced the release of Virtualbox 2.2. According to the changelog this new version has 10 new features and over 30 bug fix or solutions added. Virtualbox 2.2 is said to be the world most favourite open source hypervisor with over 11 million downloads.

Jim McHugh, vice president for datacentre software marketing at Sun, said: “VirtualBox has always been a fantastic tool for developers to create multiple virtual machines, network them together and deploy them using nearly any operating system.”

Virtualization has change the way we look at thin computing and other area of a IT infrastructure. So the advent of virtualization was welcome with the hope that it will reduce the waste and help businesses to cut cost and save resources. Today’s thin client solutions are more: efficient, cost effective and powerful.

Citrix Essentials was release last month the same time Citrix announced that its XenServer is available as a free download. Building on their long term relationship with Microsoft, Citrix said it new virtualization management software – Citrix Essentials will manage both its XenServer and Microsoft Windows 2008 Hyper-V. The Citrix Essentials suite of products/features is aimed at businesses that have a heterogeneous architecture of both Citrix XenServer and Microsoft Hyper-V.

Last month Citrix step up its effort to make a bigger impression in the virtualization and cloud computing market place. Citrix announced that their new version of Citrix XenServer is available as a free download (no 30/60 trial period). This is unprecedented for a software supplier to release a proprietary enterprise system with full features* free and you can use it in your production environment with unlimited installation. A move of this kind will definitely cause Microsoft and VMware to take note.