User groups in New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria are in the planning stage while Perth is having its inaugural meeting on August 31, 2006.

VMware is expected to announce within two weeks the date of its first customer conference to be held in Australia.

Paul Harapin, VMware Australia/New Zealand managing director, said local interest in virtualization technology is so strong customers "contact us constantly".

Harapin said adoption rates have been high and as a result virtualization maturity in Australia is on par with the US.

A little over a year ago VMware had three staff in Australia, Harapin said, and numbers have increased ten-fold since then.