I agree with the general notion that adoption by the “big guys” drives larger scale acceptance, but I believe that may of the “smaller guys” have already led the charge. At Xsigo, we work every day with users — both large and small — who are using VMware, EMC, and Cisco products in ways that are already efficient and well integrated.

A great example is New England Biolabs (http://www.xsigo.com/blog/?p=196), a company that has already deployed these solutions and has infact gone a step further in integrating virtual I/O as well.

While large scale initiatives such as VCE present a unified front to the “big guys”, my experience is that those initiaves often follow in the wake of early adoptors. So, yes, VCE will elevate the conversation for everybody, but I’d maintain that by the time VCE catches hold, quite a few users(both large and small) will have already gone a step to two further.

Amen. There is a difference between unified infrastructure and unified management. Taking a systems-view of infrastructure is the next big thing. In some ways, this alliance helps (although I bet there’s still “paging” involved between the 3 products). Another approach to unified management is the Egenera approach on a converged network, http://fountnhead.blogspot.com/2009/09/ideal-datacenter-in-box-part-ii.html We should be able to define a server/environment (physical *or* virtual) and then click/instantiate it.