Today, it's no news that most leading global companies are battling server sprawl. Ever challenged by drastically increasing demand and rapidly decreasing data center real estate, IT teams have turned to virtualization as the silver bullet that can consolidate resources without breaking the bank.

According to a recent IDG study, 80% of companies have invested in virtualization technology, yet less than one-third of them are using nonproprietary solutions. To find out why, ComputerWorld decided to address this phenomenon head on. Combining a real-world success story and a candid conversation with industry powerhouses IBM, Intel, and Novell, this paper sheds light on the misconceptions about open-source virtualization solutions, provides a blueprint for how to deploy them, and illustrates how opting for open source is a good thing for your IT infrastructure.