To a great degree, IBM’s power to endorse a technology governs what industry and CIO/CTOs say and do in the five- to 10-year cycle following a major strategic announcement. In this case, it’s gratifying to see IBM endorse a massive-scale virtualization product. The IBM Enterprise Linux Server (ELS) offering might just be one of those game-changing announcements, provided IBM can deliver the necessary services and application integration to make the package palatable to VMWare-crazed infrastructure engineers.