The big are going to be bigger: Is that what this downturn going to give us? For example, Cisco plans datacenter in a box (call it as a Cisco-Intel-MS-VMware-EMC-BMC combo offer.) IBM eyes Sun. This portfolio diversification may make some of these companies better prepared for the upturn.
The biggest take away from all this activity is simple: Virtualization is going to get leaps and bounds following. Almost every stable distribution now has a virtual appliance variant, just like a live CD. Now there are appliances made “with” virtualization in the backend.