Greg Ness of BlueLane Technologies posts a well thought-out discussion of the state of security in today's datacenters and how the meshing of virtualization, advanced security technologies, and changes in hacker behavior are coming together to make 2008 a banner year for virtualization and security. He writes...

If you look at the current array of network security categories you have firewall, NIPS and host intrusion protection (HIPS). Network and server security means S (security) = FW+NIPS+HIPS, along with AV, NAC, etc. With servers becoming more important and the advent of sophisticated next gen firewalls (by the likes of Palo Alto Networks, Cisco and Juniper) it seems likely that network intrusion prevention will collapse as a feature into firewall functionality; and that will drive the rise of application/protocol based "server IPS" solutions, like Blue Lane and Imperva versus the awkward world of HIPS (latency, incomplete protection and server code changes).

A very long post, its worth a read if you're considering futures in the world of security. Check it out at: http://www.archimedius.net/ (I can't find a permalink)