Surgient a provider of virtual lab management software used to automate and accelerate the application lifecycle, enabling IT to more quickly respond to changing business needs. Surgient's platform and solutions centralize preproduction infrastructure and automate the deployment, configuration and teardown of complex enterprise software environments.  The Surgient platform provides overall management and control of policies that determine access to and usage of centralized lab infrastructure, enabling automated self-service provisioning of configurations on that infrastructure by end-users. Surgient’s unique approach to self-service includes guaranteed reservations and scheduling of capacity in the lab, secure remote access for distributed or outsourced teams and role-specific workflows that eliminate the complexity of accessing configurations in the lab. By eliminating the substantial time and cost that companies spend to manually deploy, configure, and tear down complex software lab environments, Surgient dramatically raises the reliability and effectiveness of today’s application lifecycle activities, yielding greater productivity and a more rapid return on investment.

Surgient’s virtual lab management platform delivers solutions for a number of business critical initiatives including:

• Software Testing
• Application Training
• Software Sales Evaluations

SYS-CON’s Virtualization Journal’s “Readers’ Choice Awards”
SYS-CON's Virtualization Journal announced today its first annual Virtualization Readers' Choice Awards. SYS-CON's Readers' Choice Awards, also known as the "Oscars of the Software Industry" has been one of the most prestigious industry award programs for more than a decade. This year's virtualization awards will be given in 17 categories and award-winning products and services will be selected by Virtualization Journal readers.

Virtualization takes the cost and complexity out of IT, and can even help us reduce the CO2 footprint. IDC has stated that the virtualization services market alone is going to reach $11.7 billion by 2011 and in general this technology, which has been around for a good number of years, seems suddenly to be on everyone's mind.

In short, Virtualization is fast becoming a key requirement for every server in the data center, enabling increased workloads in server consolidation projects, efficient software development and testing, resource management for dynamic data centers, application re-hosting and compatibility, and high-availability partitions.

The tipping point, though - as anticipated by industry experts already back in 2005 - seems to be coming in 2008.

2008 will be the year of Virtualization with many companies offering their products and services, including: 3 Leaf, Acronis, Agilysys, Akorri, AMD, APC, Appistry, AppStream, Attune Systems, Avanade, BEA Systems, Blue Lane, Brocade, CA, Cassatt, Certeon, CiRBA, Citrix, ClearCube, Coraid, Crosswalk, DataDirect, DataSynapse, Digipede Technologies, Double-Take Software, Dynamic Network Factory, Ecora Software, Egenera, Embotics, EMC, Enigmatic, Enomaly, EqualLogic, Evault, eXludus Technologies, F5Networks, FalconStor, FastScale Technology, Fortisphere, GlobalFluency, Grid Dynamics, Hitachi, HP, IBM, InovaWave, Intel, KACE, Kidaro, Layeredtech, LeftHand Networks, Leostream, Mainline, ManageIQ, Marathon Technologies, Mellanox Technologies, Microsoft, Mid-Atlantic Computers, Mindbridge Software, Ncomputing, NeoPath Networks, Neoware, Network Appliance, Neverfail, Novell, Opalis Software, OPNET Technologies, Opsware / HP, Oracle, Panologic, Parallels, PlateSpin, Platform Computing, PolyServe, Provision Networks, Raxco Software, Red Hat, Reflex Security, rPath, Sagent Solutions, SAP, Scalent Systems, ScienceLogic, Seanodes, Splunk, Stoneware, StorageNetworking.org, Supermicro Computer, Surgient, SWsoft, Symantec, Tangosol, Thinstall, Tideway Systems, TOA Solutions, TRANGO Virtual Processors, Trigence, United Devices, VeeAm Software, Virtual Iron, VirtualLogix, Virtugo Software, Vizioncore, VMLogix, vmSight, VMware, vThere – Sentillion, Wyse Technology, XDS, XenSource, Xsigo Systems, and ZenithOptimedia.