VMware is set to navigate a sea of opportunities to spread virtualisation when it floats later this year.

This week, the x86 virtualisation pioneer issued details of plans to move to the public markets “as soon as practicable”. The filing was bolstered by Intel saying it would pay $218.5m for a 2.5 percent stake in VMware, thus valuing the company at about $8.7bn. Even that figure may be modest after the firm’s IPO with predictions of a $10bn-plus valuation being touted by experts.

Together with the resources of parent EMC, the funding will help VMware’s efforts to advance on a broad front to confirm its position as perhaps the most significant young business software company in IT and broaden the fast-growing trend towards virtualisation.

At a user conference in London today, VMware vice-president of technology development Steve Herrod said Management tools will be key. In particular, supporting configuration management databases and system management frameworks through APIs and work with standards group the DMTF will be key.

Hardware optimisation through multicore and other microprocessor advances such as Extended Page Tables (EPT) for Intel and Nested Page Tables (NPT) for AMD -- as well as converged fabric I/O and large memory configurations -- would also create a powerful platform.

Herrod said that users could “take advantage of all the extra horsepower” with “service VMs” for tasks such as intrusion detection or “check-pointing” so deployments can be rolled back

Also, Herrod referred to ongoing virtualisation advances such as memory sharing that will “collapse down physical memory” needs by getting rid of redundant elements when multiple VMs with the same OS have common data, applications or components loaded, and “memory ballooning” a way to have guests indirectly communicate and “inflate” or “deflate” memory needs accordingly.

Jefford declined to discuss details of future products, citing the quiet period before the company floats. However, judging by the agenda, VMware will announce VMware Server 2.0 at September’s VMworld conference in San Francisco.

The VMworld web site suggests the release “will include a fully-featured web-based user interface, permitting remote management of the server and its virtual machines without requiring client installation, and it will be manageable by the next release of VirtualCenter”.

Speakers at the London conference suggested that VMware is making the transition from evaluation to production environment as IDC research director Chris Ingle predicted that 49 percent of new servers will be virtualised compared to just seven percent of the installed base.

Andrew Gordon, technical infrastructure manager at Standard Life, said his firm has 37 ESX Server hosts running a total of 362 guests.

“Previously, it took 10-15 days to deploy a server because you would need the server guys, network guys to check for available ports, and SAN guys who checked disk availability,” Gordon said. “Now, it’s 30 minutes via an intranet request form and we’re working on on-demand compute power for people who might only need it for two days.”

Capita Life and Pensions infrastructure manager Shaymus Kennedy said virtualisation incidentally offered an environmental advantage when his firm set up eight ESX servers running over 80 virtual machines.

“We lowered our carbon footprint before we even knew what a carbon footprint was,” he joked.

However, hurdles remain, not least software licensing. “There’s been rapid churn in how people do licensing but, sadly, it’s still one of the innovative areas of software,” said VMware’s Herrod.