Peter Campbell, Earthjustice and Matthew Eshleman, Community IT Innovators

This year's Nonprofit Technology Conference offered a good chance to discuss one the most important -- but geeky -- developments in the world of computers and networks: server virtualization.

In a nutshell, virtualization technology allows many computers to run concurrently on one server, each believing it's the sole occupant. This allows for energy and cost savings, greater efficiency, and some astounding improvements in the manageability of your networks and backups.

Most of the discussion related to virtualization has been centered on large data centers and enterprise implementations, but a small network can also take advantage of the benefits that virtualization has to offer.