Interop 2009 in New York is next week, November 16 – 20 at the Javits Convention Center. One of the things that caught our attention for Interop 2009, naturally, was the focus on virtualization. Virtualization not only has its own tracks at the event, there is even an entire day dedicated to Virtualization during the event. The virtualization track includes education tracks on: Virtualization Concepts and Practices, Virtualization Management, and Desktop Virtualization. The Virtualization Day is comprised of two half-day workshops. These workshops are entitled: Advanced Virtualization Management and Automation and Expanding Virtualization to Desktops and Applications.

Another interesting tidbit out of the Interop organizers is results to a pre-show survey, some of the survey highlights include:

• 44% of attendees intend to increase spending on technology in 2010
• The budget spend increase in 2010 will be driven by investments in cloud computing, virtualization, network infrastructure, security and mobile technologies
• 31% of attendees indicate virtualization as a top priority initiative in the coming year, up from 21% a year ago

We are very excited to see the huge focus on virtualization at Interop. But this also begs the question: Who is buying virtualization in your company? Is it the IT manager, network manager, applications manager, server manager, storage manager, or all of the above? Or, is there a “virtualization czar” position being created within your company? We’d like to know. So if you don’t mind participating in a mini survey with us, please comment to this article posting and let us know who in your company is responsible for virtualization purchases.