Lowell, Massachusetts - (The Hosting News) - September 27, 2007 - Enterprise-class server virtualization and virtual infrastructure management software firm, Virtual Iron Software, has debuted its launch of a new research survey, in order to determine the emerging IT infrastructure requirements of hosted service providers.

All respondents will be automatically entered in a drawing for a new Apple iPhone, to encourage participation. At the project's conclusion, Virtual Iron will publish the findings of the results of the survey, and make them available for download at its website. The brief survey, focusing on the data center needs of hosted service providers and the potential role of server virtualization, is located at www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=Cpjf7jAFhNOAL7GtfQde6Q_3d_3d.

Hosted services businesses have unique IT infrastructure requirements - managing hundreds -- if not thousands -- of different customer environments. They need to cost-effectively deliver increasingly high service levels in a utility computing model. To be successful they must:

• Share computing infrastructure across multiple customers while delivering all the security, isolation and performance of a dedicated environment.
• Expand and differentiate service offerings while meeting stringent service level requirements.
• Address problems associated with under-utilized capacity or under-sized hardware and manage hardware outages.
• Simplify system management and reduce high operational costs caused by a complex data center infrastructure.

The survey examines hosted service provider's needs in these areas and the role server virtualization might play in addressing them by reducing data center operational costs, increasing management flexibility and improving service levels. Participants should be involved with at least one of the following business types:

• Website hosting
• Application hosting, software as a service
• Outsourced servers (shared or dedicated environments)

Virtual Iron provides production-ready server virtualization and virtual infrastructure management capabilities for unmodified Windows and Linux at one-fifth the cost of comparable alternatives. The platform combines an open source hypervisor with advanced virtualization services and sophisticated policy-based management. Virtual Iron's products are designed to enable users to take full advantage of new hardware-assisted virtualization (Intel VT and AMD-V) on servers, to deliver near native performance. The software also offers other enterprise-class capabilities such as large memory support (up to 96 GB), large SMP capabilities (up to 8 CPUs) and the ability to virtualize server platforms with up to 32 physical CPUs. Virtual Iron requires no installation or management of software on physical servers, further simplifying installation and data center operations, which differs from other virtualization solutions.

Virtual Iron's enterprise-class server virtualization and virtual infrastructure management software, is designed to enable companies to reduce the cost and complexity of managing and operating data centers. The software includes advanced capabilities that leverage industry standards, open source economics and built-in hardware-assisted acceleration. Small, medium and large organizations worldwide may use Virtual Iron for: production server consolidation; development and test optimization; cost-effective high availability and disaster recovery; dynamic capacity management; and virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI). The software is available exclusively through Virtual Iron's Channel One partner network. Evaluation copies are also available for free download.

To learn more about the survey, please visit: www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=Cpjf7jAFhNOAL7GtfQde6Q_3d_3d.

For more information about Virtual Iron, please visit: www.virtualiron.com.