Today, it's safe to say that virtual appliances are nearing the tipping point as a mainstream format for commercial software. I'm proud to say that rPath pioneered this space and continues to have the most advanced solution available for this purpose.

So, it was with both pride and dismay that I read the recent news from our friends at Novell: "Novell Announces Industry's First Solution for Creating and Deploying Fully Supported Software Appliances." [Cue record needle scratch].

Industry's first? A stretch, to be sure, but never let the facts get in the way of a good story, I suppose.

This notwithstanding, it is great news that Novell has made appliances a strategic priority, much as VMware and others have. This substantiates the market we've defined and helps to shine a light on the virtues of this form factor for application delivery. It's good news all around-and despite the reaching headline-it's news that we relish as innovators in technology for simplifying application delivery.

Not only did rPath pioneer this space, we've perfected it. Please accept that, not as arrogance, but as a testament to the energy and investment that this team has put into its products and inventions. Over the last three years, we've developed enabling technology that continues to set the standard for ISVs looking to deliver virtual appliances and lays the foundation for the release automation solutions we're providing for large enterprises who are looking to automate application deployment and maintenance.

Leading the virtual appliance space has earned us the right to call some of the largest ISVs on the planet rPath customers. It's often said that large customers force product quality and innovation. Working with these companies has served us well, making rPath the best in its class, according to IDC.

It has also taught us a great deal about the requirements for automating application deployment and maintenance for enterprise customers. Today, enterprises represent a growing segment of our customer base and the core of our future as a provider of release automation solutions.

Today, our customers are both ISVs packaging and distributing virtual appliances and large enterprises automating application deployment and maintenance across physical, virtual and cloud environments.

In both circumstances, we've found that the key to a scalable model for application delivery is deep and detailed versioning of system instances. It's the basis for automated maintenance, audit, reproduction and rollback of deployed systems. Without it, organizations have little or no ongoing control and visibility, and the proliferation of system instances-virtual or otherwise-can dramatically increase cost and risk.

What we've learned is that it's actually pretty easy to build an appliance; the hard part is managing it after it's deployed. It's this basic insight that sets rPath apart for ISVs and enterprises alike.

Welcome to the party, Novell!

Jake Sorofman is vice president of marketing for rPath, the pioneer and leader in technology for virtualizing software applications and managing the complete lifecycle of virtual appliances and application images for cloud and virtualized environments. Learn more about rPath at http://www.rpath.com, follow rpath on Twitter at @rpath and contact Jake at jsorofman@rpath.com.