EXPERT RESPONSE
Anything that is said about VMWare's "ESX Lite" hypervisor at this point is merely speculation. Not much is known about it. It is supposed to be a low footprint or embedded ESX server. This means that it will likely be offered through OEM's like Dell as a "virtualization appliance" or a server with the hypervisor built in to the mainboard.
If this technology delivers, it does offer some nice advantages to the SMB market. Complexity with regards to security and hypervisor footprint will be reduced. Since the hypervisor is built in to the server hardware, there will be nothing to install, only configure. Reliability should also be improved since the hypervisor is not relying on spinning disks for installation. This technology could also save the customer some money since storage would not be a consideration for the hypervisor portion of the virtualization. Finally, this type of technology could eventually make virtualization as easy as turning on a server or appliance. It is an exciting time for server virtualization technology, especially for SMB's in the near future.
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