SWSoft also announced their virtualization and company road map going forward the Parallels open platform:

The Parallels Open Platform - an overlay platform which brings together desktop and server virtualization plus system and business automation assets in conjunction with the company’s rapidly expanding ecosystem of partner solutions for use in on-premise, hosted and software-as-a-service (SaaS) usage models. A visual representation of how the components of this vision work together is available at www.swsoft.com/optimizedcomputing.

SWsoft is also an interesting company because they have invested in their open source initiatives already with OpenVZ which is the free and open source project that supports Virtuozzo. While VMware is a hardware virtualization product. OpenVZ is an Operating System-level server virtualizationsolution, built on Linux. OpenVZ creates isolated, securevirtual environments--VEs (otherwise known as virtual privateservers, or VPSs) on a singlephysical server enabling better server utilization and ensuringthat applications do not conflict. Each VE performs and executesexactly like a stand-alone server; VEs can be rebootedindependently and have root access, users, IP addresses, memory,processes, files, applications, system libraries andconfiguration files.

While VMware is the undisputed leader in the virtualization space, I think that SWsoft with their open source interests and their steady track record of success is a respectable second. I will be interested to see if their optimized computing vision is realized and if they can bring together their various products into a sensible, useful virtualization platform.