Last, but in the long run perhaps the most important of Red Hat's new virtualization developments: Red Hat is offering virtualization security management technologies. In the rush to cut data center costs with virtualization, it's only recently that some CIOs have become painfully aware that they needed management and security tools for their 21st century virtual servers.

Red Hat's new work in virtualization security is perhaps the least mature of the trio of technologies. Still, Red Hat is working to make it possible for administrators to manage identity and policy, while simultaneously auditing system resources and application integrity. Want to know more about this project? Check into Red Hat's newly launched FreeIPA project site. Red Hat will be more than happy to have open source community help in creating open-source solutions that could benefit every company that's packing more and more work into fewer and fewer physical servers.

Looking ahead, Stephen O'Grady, principal analyst with the open-source analysis company RedMonk says, "Much as it has in the operating system and relational database markets, open source is poised to have a disruptive impact on the virtualization space, lowering costs for customers and offering alternatives to proprietary lock-in."

Based on its announcements today, Red Hat intends to be a player in that disruption.

© 2009 CXO Media Inc.