With Australian CIOs looking overseas for Cloud services, the need for more Australian specialist infrastructure and platform-as-a-service providers presents opportunities for the local Cloud service market, according to a new study from analyst firm, Telsyte.

Kaspersky Lab has launched Security for Virtualization, designed to centralize the protection of virtual machines running on VMware, the company said on Tuesday at the Cebit trade show.

Despite Microsoft's stated commitment to Hyper-V in OpenStack, buggy code designed to support the hypervisor will be removed from the next version of the stack, developers decided on Wednesday.

Red Hat has released the third version of its Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization RHEV virtualization software package, which includes improvements that would make it suitable for larger deployments, and a new console for self-provisioning.

Server virtualization has been around for more than 10 years and while issues such as storage and I/O bottlenecks can still rear their head, the multi-faceted advantages offered by virtualization are real and attainable even if you run a small business—and since your competitors may not have discovered the benefits of the technology yet you may gain a significant competitive advantage.

Virtualizing x86 infrastructure isn't just a one-step process -- as servers change, the whole data center must change as well. While server hypervisors such as VMware's ESX, Microsoft's Hyper-V and Xen can make IT more efficient and cost-effective, many of the virtualization advantages can be canceled out when data centers rely on technology and processes that haven't been updated for the virtualization age.