SYS-CON Events announced today that Mike Neil, general manager for virtualization strategy at Microsoft will deliver the keynote speech, entitled "Virtualization Futures: From the Desktop to the Datacenter," at SYS-CON’s upcoming “International Virtualization Conference & Expo 2008 West” event which will take place November 20-21, 2008, in San Jose California.

Mike Neil is general manager for virtualization strategy in the Windows Server Division at Microsoft Corp in Redmond, Wash.  He is focused on the delivery of the Windows virtualization technology, including Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, Microsoft Hyper-V Server and Virtual PC 2007. Mike also directs the technical enablement of Microsoft’s broader vision for virtualization, to include virtualization management tools and virtualized desktop infrastructure. Prior to this role, he was responsible for Microsoft’s server and PC virtualization efforts since 2003.

Neil joined Microsoft as part of Microsoft’s February 2003 acquisition of Connectix Corp.  While at Connectix, he was the vice president of engineering and worked on the original team that developed Virtual PC Mac, allowing Apple Macintosh computers to run Windows.  He also was one of the founders of Pixo, a small company that developed operating systems and applications for handheld devices, the most notable of which is the Apple iPod.

After attending the University of Michigan, Neil joined Apple culminating as the integration lead and technical lead for Apple’s OS project code named Copeland.

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Virtualization is becoming an increasingly important concept, not only to IT staffs, but to CIOs and line-of-business managers as well. It is quickly being deployed in server, storage, networking, as well as client environments.

"Deploying Virtualization in the Enterprise" is the conference theme of SYS-CON's 4th International Virtualization Conference & Expo.. The Call for Papers, which is now open, welcomes submissions from exceptional speakers with high-quality use cases not only of how virtualization maximizes the use of resources and thus saves companies money, but also of how it is fundamentally altering the way that businesses run IT.

Conference Faculty - A Who's Who of Virtualization Technology Rock Stars!
International Virtualization Conference & Expo faculty alumni include such notable speakers as: Brian Stevens, CTO of Red Hat; Stephen Herrod, CTO of VMware; Vern Brownell, founder and CEO of Egenera; Simon Crosby, founder and CTO of Citrix XenSource; Hubert Yoshida, vice president and CTO of Hitachi Data Systems; Jeffrey Nick, CTO of EMC; David Greschler, director of Virtualization Strategy for Microsoft; Hal Stern, vice president and distinguished engineer for Sun Microsystems; Andrew Hillier, founder and CTO of CiRBA; Alex Vasilevsky, founder and CEO of Virtual Iron; Jack Zubarev, founder and COO of SWsoft; Stephen Pollack, founder and CEO of PlateSpin; Brett Adam, founder and CEO of rPath; Kevin Brown, founder and CEO of Kidaro; Bob Lozano, founder and CEO of Appistry; and Harry Ruda, founder and CEO of Desktone.

Sponsors and Exhibitors

SYS-CON's International Virtualization Conference & Expo events are sponsored by the world's leading virtualization technology providers, including:

• Intel (Platinum Sponsor)
• Red Hat (Platinum Sponsor)
• Green Hills Software (Platinum Sponsor)
• Fujitsu (Gold Sponsor)
• Novell / Platespin (Gold Sponsor)
• Ceedo (Gold Sponsor)
• Software AG (Gold Sponsor)
• 3PAR (Silver Sponsor)
• APC (Silver Sponsor)
• Certeon (Silver Sponsor)
• Web Age Solutions (Silver Sponsor)
• WSO2 (Silver Sponsor)
• Stoneware (Silver Sponsor)
• AppStream (Expo Sponsor)
• Astaro (Expo Sponsor)
• Composite Software (Expo Sponsor)
• Grid Dynamics (Expo Sponsor)
• InstallFree (Expo Sponsor)
• Nastel (Expo Sponsor)
• Managed Methods (Expo Sponsor)
• Farata Systems (Expo Sponsor)
• Splunk (Expo Sponsor)
• Xsigo Systems (ExpoSponsor)
• DataSynapse (Expo Sponsor)
• Mellanox Technologies (Expo Sponsor)
• Marathon Technologies (Expo Sponsor)
• MQ Software (Expo Sponsor)
• RingCube (Expo Sponsor)
• Reflex Security (Expo Sponsor)