There's been a lot of online chatter lately about the open virtual machine format and upcoming virtualization standards (see this article, for example). At Virtual Iron, we believe this is a very good thing for the industry and we're strong supporters of the open virtual machine format for a few simple reasons:

- This will simplify the deployment of multi-tier virtual appliances. In other words, easier for you -- the virtualization user.
- The standard will allow virtual servers that are archived to have more state saved with them. This makes archiving and restoring more resilient and is better for backup and disaster recovery strategies.

We’ve always supported open standards, whether it’s the current Microsoft VHD or the future OVF.