VM support for unikernels is literally a prerequisite for unikernel uptake, so that's hardly surprising, but coming from academia: if a highly niche market using a thing still keeps it a mostly academic exercise, and this article does not contain anything that talks about how it has finally escaped the "mostly interesting to academics, and that handful of people who use it in their highly specialized or possibly instead just plain old 'someone once set it up and it's too critical to change now' systems".