Virtualization software provider XenSource next week will launch its first product, XenEnterprise, competing head-to-head with industry leader VMWare in the space, its chief executive officer (CEO) said Thursday.“XenEnterprise is ready to go. We believe there is a lot of demand for this stuff,” said Peter Levine, president and CEO of XenSource, after an address at the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo in San Francisco.Levine described it as a soft launch, with a more formal launch to follow in the fourth quarter of this year. XenSource has set up a two-tier sales channel and distributors around Europe and North America, he said.XenEnterprise, an open-source product, serves as a hypervisor, an overarching software program that helps an enterprise manage a disparate computer network holistically. Enterprises struggling to reduce costs and control an unwieldy IT infrastructure find that multiple servers are often underutilized. Virtualization, as it’s called, allows multiple applications to run on one server but operate independently, allowing the enterprise to better utilize its servers. Although virtualization has been the buzz among technology providers, only 6 percent of enterprises have actually deployed virtualization on their networks, said Levine, citing a TWP Research report. That makes the other 94 percent a wide-open market. XenSource’s open-source solution competes against the proprietary virtualization systems from VMWare, a unit of EMC. Levine acknowledged VMWare’s role in establishing virtualization. “VMWare has done a great job of educating the market. As a startup, we don’t have to go out and say virtualization is important because of this or that. VMWare has done that,” Levine said.XenEnterprise is supported in the new release of Novell’s Suse Enterprise Linux distribution, while Microsoft pledged to support Xen-virtualized Linux with its forthcoming Longhorn server virtualization technology. IBM, meanwhile, announced that its low-end servers and middleware will support Xen via the new Suse release.Although the concept of virtualization has been around for years in mainframes, it is now catching on in client-server environments, Levine said, and is changing the industry.“Virtualization is having an amazing global impact. It hasn’t solved hunger, but it is having a significant impact,” Levine said.-Robert Mullins, IDG News Service (San Francisco Bureau)Check out our CIO News Alerts and Tech Informer pages for more updated news coverage. Related content brandpost Sponsored by G42 Understanding the impact of AI on society, environment and economy By Jane Chan Dec 03, 2023 4 mins Artificial Intelligence opinion Website spoofing: risks, threats, and mitigation strategies for CIOs In this article, we take a look at how CIOs can tackle website spoofing attacks and the best ways to prevent them. By Yash Mehta Dec 01, 2023 5 mins CIO Cyberattacks Security brandpost Sponsored by Catchpoint Systems Inc. Gain full visibility across the Internet Stack with IPM (Internet Performance Monitoring) Today’s IT systems have more points of failure than ever before. Internet Performance Monitoring provides visibility over external networks and services to mitigate outages. By Neal Weinberg Dec 01, 2023 3 mins IT Operations brandpost Sponsored by Zscaler How customers can save money during periods of economic uncertainty Now is the time to overcome the challenges of perimeter-based architectures and reduce costs with zero trust. By Zscaler Dec 01, 2023 4 mins Security Podcasts Videos Resources Events SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe