SYS-CON's Virtualization Journal announced today that nominations are now open for its second annual Virtualization Readers' Choice Awards. SYS-CON's Readers' Choice Awards, also known as the "Oscars of the Software Industry," has been one of the most prestigious industry award programs for more than a decade. This year's virtualization awards will be given in 18 categories and award-winning products and services will be selected by Virtualization Journal readers.

"The i-Technology and Infrastructure professionals who constitute the dedicated readers of Virtualization Journal are personally, professionally, and often passionately involved in the front-line of Enterprise IT. Their recognition is hard to win," said Jeremy Geelan, Sr. Vice-President of SYS-CON Media. "That is why we are so excited to be launching these Readers' Choice awards, an open competition that gives everyone an equal chance, no matter what part of the IT ecosystem they inhabit, of giving recognition to the solutions they commend the most."

The nominations deadline is August 31, 2009, and voting will begin September 1, 2009, and end October 23, 2009. Winners will be announced the week of November 2-4, 2009.

Virtualization takes the cost and complexity out of IT, and can even help us reduce the CO2 footprint. IDC has stated that the virtualization services market alone is going to reach $11.7 billion by 2011 and in general this technology, which has been around for a good number of years, seems suddenly to be on everyone's mind.

In short, Virtualization is fast becoming a key requirement for every server in the data center, enabling increased workloads in server consolidation projects, efficient software development and testing, resource management for dynamic data centers, application re-hosting and compatibility, and high-availability partitions.

Nominated Products and Services by Category:

• Best Application Virtualization
• Best Desktop Virtualization Platforms
• Best Device Virtualization
• Best Grid Virtualization
• Best Network Virtualization
• Best Open Interfaces
• Best P2V Migration
• Best Server Virtualization Platforms
• Best Storage Virtualization
• Best VDI - Virtual Desktop Infrastructure
• Best Virtual Lab Automation
• Best Virtual Security
• Best Virtualization Configuration Management
• Best Virtualization Management Tools
• Best Virtualization Platforms Capacity Planning
• Best Virtualization Platforms High Availability
• Best Virtualization Platforms Monitoring & Reporting
• Best VM Lifecycle Management