Two somewhat contrary-sounding drivers fuel the emerging renaissance in
enterprise data management - virtualization and convergence. Virtualization
is a framework for dividing up the resources of an organization into multiple
execution environments through the application of one or more technologies
such as hardware clustering, software partitioning, application
modularization, emulation, and so on. Convergence, on the other hand, tries
to bring diverse information assets - databases, mail stores, documents -
under unified management. The coming Information Grid unites these opposing
drivers.
The drive behind virtualization is the lowering of cost. Today's emerging
grid computing environments enable not only the virtualization of IT
resources such as storage, bandwidth... (more)