Virtualization can also serve as software delivery medium. You know, like floppies, CDs and DVDs. You do sacrifice space and some CPU power, but get a controlled installation environment in exchange. This comes handy if a product you are trying to distribute takes some effort and knowledge to install correctly....

Almost everybody is familiar with better resource utilization as one of the benefits of virtualization. You can reduce the physical footprint (have fewer physical pieces of hardware) and still run the same number of “standalone” servers as before virtualization. I think however that there is another huge benefit that doesn’t...