Full Virtualization – BISE’s Contribution to a Vision

Excerpt

Some innovations, whose long history of success faded into the background in the course of time, come back in a refreshed form decades later initiated by marketing activities of some companies. In the field of information and communication technology (ICT) we can currently see a renaissance of virtualization. Already at the end of the 1960 s there had been mainframe computers originating from IBM’s family of /360 systems that used virtualization technology ready for series production. According to IBM, this was the most important product announcement in the company’s history. On a single system multiple users were able to simultaneously use independent virtual machines and thus reduce the need for additional and expensive hardware. This technological progress was not only an important foundation for IBM’s long lasting success story but also for many other companies. Just as in those days it is the economic factors that draw back the attention to virtualization today. True to the motto “Back to the Roots”, current ICT initiates a trend reversal from many decentralized back to centralized and powerful large-scale systems in order to reduce procurement, operating, and maintenance cost. In his masterwork “Summa technologiae” published in 1964, Stanislav Lem shows that more than forty years ago people dealt with virtualization not only as regards infrastructure but that also visions of an application existed which would change people’s lives. He outlined a “phantomatic machine” that allowed people who were connected to this machine to view and to experience fictitious situations, such as a balloon flight for instance. Today, these “machines” have become real and are called “cyberspace”, “virtual world”, or “virtual reality”. They are used as simulation systems, e. g. in pilot training or massive multiplayer online games such as Second Life with thousands of users. …