More than a year has elapsed since the economic downturn began, and the year 2009 was again marked by contracting IT budgets, fewer data center staff and, of course, more assets for IT staff to manage.

Despite the clear stalling in many areas of IT spending, the virtualization market has roared along. Virtualization technologies have provided IT managers with tangible and immediate ways to save on hardware and energy costs, augment data center flexibility, and even improve server management and performance.

Within the virtualization marketplace, many technologies emerged in 2009 that were innovative, cost saving, or just downright functional. Today, SearchServerVirtualization.com has announced the winners of its annual Products of the Year awards, a sampling of the companies we and our judges believe are best positioned to provide great products in 2010 and beyond.