Is Virtualization Really Ushering In the Multiple-OS Future?

by Sam Dean - Feb. 06, 2012Comments (0)

Without a doubt, virtualization has been one of the biggest trends in computing in recent years, and open source has been a huge part of the virtualization story. Not only are there lots of top-notch open source hypervisors that let users dabble in more than one operating system at a time, but virtualization has let many users combine open source operating systems with proprietary ones. Through virtualization, it's easy to run Linux and other operating systems concurrently, but do IT departments want business users doing so? That has become a cause for much debate.

There is an effort on to push open virtualization standards throughout the technology industry, as evidenced by the Open Virtualization Alliance. Backed by IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Novell, BMC, and Eucalyptus Systems, the alliance is designed to promote an open source virtualization stack built atop the KVM hypervisor.

But not all IT departments want users mixing and matching operating systems, which has resulted in a type of anti-virtualization sentiment. As InfoWorld notes:

"It's not a matter of whether virtualization is good or bad. The real question is whether IT is looking for a silver-bullet approach to essentially neutralize the point of the consumerization phenomenon, which is to let users use the tools they find most comfortable and effective for them. That's not what the vendors and receptive IT managers are discussing...The notion trying to gain currency encourages bypassing iOS, Android, Mac OS X, and Linux on a user's device and forcing them into a Windows-only environment for all corporate use. A common selling point is disallowing all connection between the personal (non-Windows) and business (Windows) contexts, not on extending Windows with native capabilities or vice versa."

InfoWorld even goes so far as to wonder whether virtualization has become an "enforcer of the Windows monoculture." In many ways, virtualization represents the biggest test yet of the hegemony of the Windows platform in business environments. If you've used hypervisors at all, you know that it's ultra simple to get them to run multiple operating systems concurrently.

In the coming year, it's likely that many IT departments will lay down concrete rules about whether users are allowed to venture out from the Windows platform, and work in dual-OS environments. If they set open rules, virtualization could help dramatically raise Linux usage, but that means abandoning the Windows monoculture. Don't hold your breath waiting for that to happen.