Back in 2006, I was working with a large Canadian managed-hosting service provider. At that time, there was huge demand for hosting dedicated servers. Hardware, bandwidth, and management all came at a high cost. However, things started to change with the rise of virtualization: it was able to bring the hosting costs down. I still remember that there were all sorts of discussions, arguments, articles, and summits where people were bringing the pros and cons of virtualization to the table. As with any technology, in the beginning, there were issues, but virtualization technologies developed rapidly and brought businesses to a point that they can't look away from.
For us, it was the same: business-wise, we were safe with dedicated server hosting. We were making good profits. But with virtualization, customers were able to bring racks of dedicated...