Last week we participated in TechEd 2006. We had a double booth in the Expo area – probably you saw us if you attended.
We talked (and listened) to A LOT of people, and here is the summary of our observations:

·         A lot more people are using virtualization compared to TechEd 2005. 80% are using virtualization and 100% are evaluating it for deployments – compared to 50% and 60-70% respectively at TechEd 2005.

·         VMware users were much more interested to alternative approaches. Last year VMware users may or may not have had the time to talk to us… this year they did J

·         Hardware virtualization is still used mostly for testing and development. Only about 25% or less of the people I talked to use it in production

·         About 80% of the production hardware virtualization users mention “OS sprawl” either as a problem they’re dealing with now or something they’re anticipating in the near future.

Rufus (our PR guy) came up with a fantastic idea with the Bose Headset giveaway. “Cancel out the Virtualization Noise” was the motto for the drawings, which turned out to be incredibly popular and generated a lot of interest around our booth.

Overall, it was a great event for us – we’re looking forward to the next year!