Virtualization is one of the most important trends in the computing industry. According to IDC, enterprise spending on virtualization will reach $15B worldwide by 2009. Most of this investment will manifest itself on production servers running business critical workloads. And today, leading virtualizations solutions are provided by a mix of Xen-enabled Linux and Windows-based solutions running in mixed environments.

As part of a broader interoperability collaboration, Microsoft and Novell technical experts are architecting and testing new virtualization scenarios to jointly develop the most compelling virtualization offering in the market for Linux and Windows.

This talk will cover two major components of the future of Linux and Windows interoperability: Virtualization and Web Services protocols.

On the Metal will focus on the virtualization interoperability work being done between the Longhorn Server hypervisor, Viridian, and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and Xen.

On the Wire will cover the details and challenges of implementing standards specifications, such as WS-Federation and WS-Management; and how protocol interoperability will enable effective virtualization deployment and management.

This discussion will also cover, in-depth, the engineering work being conducted in the lab being run by Microsoft and Novell. Data will cover the technical approach – the hardware, software, and in-process testing, to run this properly in your environment.