You might have guessed that I'm keen on virtualization technology. I see its usefulness as falling into a number of categories, from a useful test and development environment, through to improving and making better use of your hardware environment.

For that latter purpose, there are some good tips on Understanding Virtualization.

There's also another virtualization product on the horizon that I haven't investigated fully yet. Parallels. A Test Drive is available at Newsforge, and you can download a 45-day free trial at the Parallels website.

Unless you missed the hubbub, Sun are offering the T1000/T2000 on 'Try and Buy', and I'm sure there's has been a recent spurt because of Jonathan Schwartz's suggestion that receivers that provide good reviews might be allowed to keep them.

Now I'm no stranger to Sun kit, having reviewed a few items before now. Earlier this year, I also reviewed the Ultra 3 Mobile Workstation and that review will be hitting a website soon.

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) promises lots, not least of which is the ability to migrate your SOA application to a grid like environment.

Actually migrating your applications and realizing the difference it can make is a different story. But DreamWorks have managed it, They've converted many of their internal ERP applications into SOA applications, and that has reduced their server requirements, giving more rack space to the server farms that render CGI animation.