Spring is coming! That means flowers, green grass and motorcycles in Minnesota. Our next meeting in April brings a fresh subject in the spirit of new beginnings of the season.

The term virtualization means many things to many people. Environment, past experiences and biases play a big role as to whether companies will use virtualization in their data centers. Most companies have virtualization footprint of some kind at this point; does yours? If your answer is no, they probably did it a long time ago and just never told you.

Oracle is entrenched in the virtualization space with Oracle VM, Solaris Zones and Solaris Logical Domains. VMware currently owns the virtualization space with VSphere. Microsoft has a niche in the Windows world with Hyper-V. Open source products like Xen and mainframe platforms like IBM LPARs have their place as well. The April meeting will focus on virtualization technology in the Oracle space with a special emphasis on database running in a virtual space.

RSVP notices have already gone out but if you didn't see it, another will be coming out soon. We would like to welcome Greg King from Oracle, Tariq Farooq from Brain Surface, Eric Steed from Collier-IT and Mike O'Rourke from Netapp to our Spring meeting. Greg, Tariq, Eric and Mike will be covering a number of areas including Oracle VM and VMware. We look forward to seeing you on the 12th!