"Not many IT leaders are through this knothole," Bennett says of application portfolio trimming. "But if you want to implement a next-generation data center, this is something you're going to have to go through."

Sure, HP has skin in the game here, since it makes money by helping IT groups (including Alcatel-Lucent's) do this kind of work via its services experts.

But HP, as my colleague Kevin Fogarty has noted, enjoys a top to bottom and realistic view of virtualization from its customers right now. After all, it's selling those customers virtualization pieces from blade servers to management tools to consultants who optimize virtualization projects. HP is a well-informed and profitable Switzerland in the VMware, Citrix and Microsoft virtualization wars today.

I think Bennett's right. You will hit a wall if you construct a beautiful virtualized data center but ignore your ugly set of applications.

This is one of those second-wave virtualization issues that more of you will have to grapple with in the coming months. So how about it? Are you ready? Let's hear from some of you regarding why you are or aren't re-examining your application set, and any lessons you can share on how to do it right.