Sun/Oracle have been championing containers (Zones) for a long time now. They have their places. However, businesses still want full virtualised systems (LDOM

Sun/Oracle have been championing containers (Zones) for a long time now. They have their places. However, businesses still want full virtualised systems (LDOMs). Businesses like treating applications like appliances. They want to start up a system and not touch it again. Migrating an application to a new OS release costs them a lot of money. A zone forces an upgrade - everything on the machine needs to be rolled forward to the new release. Since businesses typically have a patchwork of software in various levels of support, continuous upgrades can be an expensive (and possibly impossible) task. For example, the application vendor may require a license purchase in order to get support for the new OS release. The vendor may even have gone out of business, and the replacement is still 6-12 months away. In a full virtualised platform, you're not forced to continually pay that maintenance cost. You are free to store it as technical debt and pay it in a more managed fashion.