eWeek - February 1, 2010

Maybe Twitter has been massively influential and changed the way we all communicate.

22. VMware

Virtualization has been around for more than 10 years, but it was in the last decade that it really took off. And, to a large degree, this drive to virtualize was driven by VMware.

Offering everything
from simple-to-use
products that let con-
sumers run virtual
machines to the most
robust enterprise-
class virtualization
platforms, VMware
has made it possible
to run whole farms of
servers with very little hardware
involved.
based interoperability among
vendors, opening the door for
the integration of many different
kinds of products into the com-
munications mix.

24. Solaris 10

During the latter half of ’00s, Sun Microsystems’ Solaris 10 sat at the leading edge of operating system technologies, with unique capabilities that include Containers virtualization, Dtrace system instrumentation and the ZFS file system. Solaris 10 also helped put a stamp of inevitability on the x86-64 architecture and on open-source-as-a-platform licensing strategy.

25 TECHNOLOGIES FROM PAGE 22

RHEL made Linux truly ready to storm the enterprise.

21. Red Hat Enterprise
Linux

Coming into the decade, Linux was already a hot commodity, but it wasn’t until Red Hat launched the buttoned-down and subscription-priced Enterprise variant of its Linux distribution that Linux was truly ready—both in terms of road map stability and of business model—truly to storm the enterprise.

23. VOIP,
Skype, SIP

Like virtualiza-
tion, voice over IP
technologies have
been around for more
than 10 years. How-
ever, it’s been only in
the last 10 years that
the technology has
reached a real state
of usability. Skype helped show
consumers
how cheap
and easy
voice calls
can be from
a PC, while
SIP signal-
ing eased
standards-

25. Windows XP

With all of the recent hype about Windows 7—and with bad experiences that nearly every user has had at one time or another with Windows XP—it might be strange to see Vista’s predecessor on any top tech list. But Windows XP is certainly the most dominant operating system of the decade. And when Vista proved to be a disappointment, a majority of users and businesses were happy to stick with Windows XP (and many still are). ;