New entrants, however, have a great opportunity to leverage UI and user experience to make their management apps more sticky and to appeal to a broader market. For example, the Bluebear guys have built a snazzy, intuitive multi-hypervisor virtualization management tool written in Adobe AIR. If I’m an SMB who is dipping my toe into the waters of virtualization, maybe a tool like this makes it easier for me to get started. Or take a company like Cloudkick, that is looking to “make the cloud easier to use an accessible to everyone.” That’s a great misson statement, and one that’s certainly achievable given the software development technologies available today.

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