Perspective: The rise and fall of IT
In the old days of DP, MIS and IT, the use of computers in companies was about tracking the business. Computers provided a retrospective snap shot (think financials or sales records) but were not used to actively operate the business--for example, developing products, selling, manufacturing or touching the customer...>full article

August 5 - VMware exec sees virtualization, virtual appliances boosting enterprise Linux adoption - Interviewfull article
VMware takes a stance of being operating-system agnostic, but do you see a particular synergy between virtualization and Linux?

Patrick Lin: They're very highly complementary. The first product we put out at VMware -- the first version of Workstation -- was actually based on Linux.

In a lot of cases, virtualization can allow you to migrate things into a different operating system environment without a lot of risk. Legacy re-hosting is one example. Another example is if a company has been predominantly a Windows shop but wants to start experimenting with Linux. One of the safest and least impactful ways to do that is to create some Linux VMs [virtual machines] on top of the existing virtualized infrastructure.

Virtualization ensures that that instance of Linux is completely isolated from all perspectives, including performance. VMware virtualization supports unmodified guest operating systems, which means that companies can choose whatever Linux type they want and run it. That really eases Linux's entry into environments that are dominated by Windows.