Innovation -- Open, Closed, whatever makes you happy

I have been recently hanging out/spending more time with budding entrepreneurs near menlo park joints. The bad thing about sand hill road is the fact that it highlights a false sense of triumph. Time is skewed to entice young kids to believe that good grad school education, good java script skills and a thousand 2nd degree friends is what it takes. Successful ventures are compressed for showing pure gravy efficiency and failures are expanded to make the big picture look rosy.

B-School kids are very fond of delivering fancy quotes. *To develop and sustain business excellence, a company must continuously innovate in the very way it creates business value in the marketplace* is a line i recently heard from a friend who hired 3 business folks and 3 engineers for his first venture. With passing time i have started appreciating the words of wisdom from old, accented and *came to states with little money* successful old timers in the valley. *People who produce/innovate/create are the most respected individuals in any industry* tops my list. The crux of the last `unrelated to the subject` 13 lines is that innovation is a relative term.

Let me list down some of the notable innovations in the virtualization market:

-- BT based x86 virtualization
-- x86 hypervisor
-- V-Motion
-- VSMP
-- DRS
-- P2V
-- Transparent memory sharing
-- Virtual Rights Management/ACE
-- Dev/Test Lifecycle Management/Akimbi
-- Para-virtualization
-- Seamless windows apps on Mac (Coherence)
-- Hot memory, processor, IO device addition to a VM
-- KVM

I can't really list down everything but this is a fair attempt to show that there has been good innovation in the market. The thing to note is that there are companies/projects other than VMware who have brought innovation to the market. Competition is good for the customer. I respect engineers -- people who innovate and bring freshness to the market. I don't care if they are settled in bellevue or drive 45 mins every morning through 280 or 101. As long as the market is fair and people running the business have GPA > 3.0 and have taken at least 3 CS courses it should be a game. *Computers in modern society* credits do not count.

For folks who follow my blog i promise to be more active. Have been busy stretching the long tail. Every veteran knows that to defeat the house one has to be really good with the poker face.

Favorites of the month:

Blog -- The Leveraged Sellout
Book -- Naked (funniest book i have read in years)
Startup -- BladeTop