I am always accused of being too far ahead of the main stream in many
areas where I make predictions.  I think this comes from my habit
of watching the fringe areas of development, and simply noticing some
trends early on in their development.  I then tend to extrapolate
what – IMHO – seem to be the little trends with huge growth
potential.  As much as I love Virtual PC today – for what it
provides me in doing my job and R&D – there are numerous projects
that I am coming across that further indicate that Virtualization is
becoming a growing trend … both hardware virtualization and Operating
System virtualization.

First on the OS front – ReactOS –
this is becoming more and more of a solution.  With this release I
was able to complete the installation, and boot it to a graphical
interface.  There is some basic functionality, and it’s very crude
today … but this is an impressive effort from a team that is intent
on creating another kernel and application platform.  As they
continue to work on their road-map, I’ll be following their work
closely … it is going to be an indicator to me of several core
trends.  The ability to develop a kernel and user space that is
able to support end-user applications will be the real proof of how
easy it is becoming to create and commoditize these environments.

Now on the Virtualization front – Qemu
– this is another project to create a Virtual PC / VMware type
environment … and it appears to be gaining momentum.  With
processor power still doubling at nearly an annual rate, we are already
seeing the 4.3Ghz motherboards arriving.  With all of this power,
the ability to emulate a complete PC in software – running at an
acceptable speed – is becoming the norm.  Qemu appears to be a
project that is going to bring this capability to a broader market
quickly.  I’m going to be installing this solution – and tracking
it’s progress – also.

What all of this is doing is pushing the value in computer software and
technology into new places, and new markets.  As we began work
last year on our own Application Substrate we knew this was coming …
just not this quickly.  The acceleration continues …