Here is an application that we are keeping an eye on: VMware Converter. Currently in beta, VMware Converter turns physical machines into virtual machines for consolidation, disaster recovery, or any other reason you would want a physical Windows OS machine to go virtual. Best yet, it will convert a number of physical machines on the fly, or even from other vendor’s VM products like Microsoft’s Virtual Server. Here is another scenario: thinking of upgrading to Vista? Convert your current Windows XP image into a virtual machine for safekeeping in case you need access to apps that are incompatible with Vista.

VMware Converter is certainly an app to watch, and we’ll be putting it into our lab to give it a thorough ringing out to see if it lives up to its promise.