Hoff has opined about virtualization over on his blog. He calls it in incomplete thought (a blog post series, really), but it’s really quite thorough and deep. I suggest reading the comments as well.

In essence, Hoff says, “There’s a bloated, parasitic resource-gobbling cancer inside every VM.” It’s true. Virtualization isn’t a solution to much of anything. It’s a golem of a beast created to fix problems that were symptoms themselves or much larger problems.

Here’s a really quick, 30-second mindset I have on this.

• mainframes centralize everything and people get things done with their slices
• personal computers take the world by storm
• suddenly everyone can do something on their own without the centralized wizards and curtains.
• …and everyone does things on their own, creating apps, languages, etc; decentralized apps and data
• the OS just can’t really keep up; same feature bloat hit Windows that hits all software that wants to be popular and fit every niche need (McAfee, Firefox, browsers, etc).
• then shit gets too splintered and the IT world becomes an inefficient money-drain of equipment and maintenance
• attempts to centralize everything is met with cries of “they’re stealing our admin rights, but my system is slow when I have admin rights!”

All of this ends up turning into a cycle, and one we’re destined to follow over and over. Big iron. Smaller iron. Big iron. Centralized. Decentralized. Centralized. Administrative power over your individual system. Locked down. Empowered. Locked down. It’s like a “grass is greener” mentality out of control.

But it’s more than that, as well. Part of this cyclic, mess of a vortex is the speed at which technology is progressing and our world is changing. It moves so fast that no one (business or individuals) can take the necessary time to do any of this correctly. As you’ll hear Ranum and I think even Potter say in recent talks, the problems of today are mistakes from 15 years ago. I think things just move too fast for us to realized it.

At any rate, it’s not like we can do much about it today, but at least we can be cognizant of this situation and do what we can in small measures to avoid the eddies and undertows that drown so many in these changes.