Virtualization Daily

I love headlines like that. Paul Gillin over on CIO Blogs is looking at how virtualization may redefine the software industry.

Once virtualization becomes a commodity, he believes, users’ buying patterns will change. Software will no longer become obsolete because of changes to the operating system or server hardware, but will live on indefinitely in their own virtual envelopes. There will be fewer forced migrations and more heterogeneous environments.

A big component of this, of course, is going to be the deployment of software as virtual appliances.

Software vendors will respond by making their products more modular. They’ll also deliver more products as “appliances.” Those are integrated packages that include applications and the system software needed to support them. They’re designed to run in a virtual machine or even on a dedicated box. An example of this is the Socialtext wiki appliance.

It’s a wave that’s coming rapidly and will truly alter the way software is delivered on the server side. This doesn’t apply so much on the desktop, but it kind of seems we’re heading for a future where the desktop increasingly depends on nothing more than a web browser any way. Will Web 2.0 take over the world? I don’t know, but it’s certainly interesting to think about it. Regardless, there’s some major changes brewing in the software industry.