There has been a fair amount of talk about the Internet about Virtual Appliances. Virtual Appliances are ready-to-run virtual machines that are available from VMware's website. These appliances are possible due to the free VM products VMware provides, such as VM Player and VM Server. This easily allows nearly anyone to download one of the free virtualization products and then download an appliance to use. There are numerous to choose from.
The one that prompted this post is the SugarCRM appliance from rPath. For quite some time now I have been suggesting SugarCRM as a possible replacement for our current CRM system. The appetite for such a replacement varies depending on who you ask and when you ask them. I recently spotted the SugarCRM appliance though and decided to download it. Within five minutes of having it downloaded I was up and running an install of SugarCRM and entering in Accounts for testing purposes. While setting up a demo install for SugarCRM wouldn't have been too difficult - the ability to download the appliance and work on other things while it downloaded and only spending about five minutes powering the appliance up was a great way to test out some software!
If you haven't looked at some of the appliances they have it is probably worth browsing and seeing what they have if you haven't done so already.
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