When Michael Blonsky joined us from VMware my first question to him was, “should we deploy a virtual appliance?” He looked at me as if I had three heads. As if we would even consider a physical appliance? Coming from the appliance world at Lasso Logic and then SonicWALL, I never really thought too much about virtual appliances. I was used to competing against software and when you compare installing and maintaining software to an appliance the appliance approach wins hands down. However, when comparing a virtual appliance to a physical appliance it seems that the virtual appliance wins hands down. In fact, I believe over time almost all vendors will move to virtual appliances. Today, KACE released one. It just makes sense.
Of course there are limitations to virtual appliances, but if the image is placed on a dedicated machine and the memory is ramped up, it makes perfect sense. In fact, in the face of a potential recession and contracting economy, why spend the extra money for another box. Most companies have an 8086 server lying around somewhere. You can bet that we will lean in that direction.
After all, networks are complicated; network management doesn’t have to be.
Steve
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