Computer world writes: PG&E will pay millions to companies that virtualize
While the article does not suggest that this is a strategic move planed by folks at VMWare and on the contrary reports that they were pleasantly surprised by the development, I will not be surprised it if was.A PG&E official announced the program to a stunned audience of 7,000 or so at VMworld 2006 in Los Angeles last week. Not even the VMware people had much advanced notice. The PG&E guy threw out some numbers just to make sure attendees could believe what they were hearing. Basically, PG&E will "pay" incentives of roughly $750 to $1,350 per virtualized server, up to a whopping $4 million per customer. In other words, PG&E will pay you to take a bunch of servers and consolidate them onto a larger one running virtual server partitions. What a virtualization slam-dunk for IT folks. CFOs out West should be jumping all over this one.
