Just before the end of the week Oracle announced an online virtualization event set for August 19: the Online Virtualization Forum.
This is not something uncommon: many vendors arrange day-long online events to market a big number of products all together. And after the acquisition of Sun, Oracle certainly has a big virtualization portfolio to talk about.
Anyway, Oracle may use this occasion to announce something big.
First of all, the event’s tagline is pretty bullish: “Discover How Oracle’s Virtualization Delivers More Value Than VMware”.
Right now the company may have a few issues to justify the statement, considering that Gartner recently recognized VMware as the sole leader in the server virtualization space and Oracle VM is at the bottom of the Niche Players section of the Magic Quadrant.
So, unless this is just a typical marketing exercise, either Oracle has a brand new product for server consolidation to announce (Oracle VM 3.0?), or it has something new in a space where VMware is not so ahead of competition (VDI?).
The second hint that something big may be announced comes from the speakers that will present at the event: Edward Screven, Chief Corporate Architect, and John Fowler, Executive Vice President of Systems.
It’s remarkable that Oracle wants both top executives to speak at the event.
The last hint comes from a post about the event published a couple of days ago on the Oracle’s Thin Client and Server Based Computing Group (our emphasis):
…So to the v12n world out there, and specifically the VDI market, watch out. The “Big Guns” are about to fire a warning shot across the bow of the marketplace.
Just in case, virtualization.info will follow the event’s keynote and provide live coverage.