Virtualization Strategies News, Analysis, White Papers and Case Studies on Virtualization Software and Hardware Strategies

Half of All North American Developers to be Using Virtualization within 12 Months

With the recession putting downward pressure on IT and software development budgets, more application developers than ever are expected to begin working on virtualization projects, according to research firm Evans Data.

More than one-third of North American developers are currently involved with virtualization projects and 51% expect to be within the next twelve months according to Evans Data’s North American Development Survey released to subscribers last week.

The survey report of 400 developers conducted in October and November examines a broad range of software development issues.

Virtualization pioneer VMware dominates the virtualization tools market with 56% of developers involved with virtualization using its tools, and only Microsoft’s Virtual Server is a significant rival with 37% usage. Xen products from Citrix and Red Hat trail behind. Read More…

Posted under Virtualization News, Virtualization Strategies

At the Gartner Data Center event this week in Las Vegas, Thomas Bittman, a Gartner data center research vice president predicted the installed base of virtual machines will grow tenfold between 2007 and 2011. By 2012, the majority of x86 server workloads will be running in virtualization software.

“Virtualization is the most important and impact trend in IT infrastructure and operations through 2012-changing how you manage, what you buy, how you deploy, how you plan, how you charge. It also shakes up the industry, in terms of licensing, pricing and component management,” Bittman said.

Virtualization, however, is merely an enabler to some other important future trends, he said. Because virtualization creates a pool of manageable, flexible capacity, automation should take that pool of resources and do useful work, based on business policies and service-level requirements.

Also, the decoupling created by virtualization combined with defined service offerings and automation is a great enabler of cloud computing, Bittman said.

Bittman laid out the following eight bullet points that describe the nature of computing and storage virtualization over the next five years: Read More…

Posted under Cloud Computing, Data Center Virtualization, Virtualization News, Virtualization Strategies

IT organizations made server virtualization a top priority for 2008, according to research released by The Society for Information Management (SIM). SIM surveyed 300 member organizations in June and learned that the top five application and technology developments for the coming year include security, business intelligence, business process management (BPM), continuity planning and disaster recovery, and server virtualization.

Top Five Technology & Application Developments 2008:

1. Antivirus protection

2. Business Intelligence (BI)

3. Business Process Management (BPM)

3. Continuity Planning and Disaster Recovery

5. Server Virtualization

The top two were the same top two from 2007.  The two items that tied for third both moved up from last year. Server Virtualization was new to the list. One item that was absent was Cloud Computing. Luftman said that it was way down on the list. Apparently, working CIOs aren’t biting on all of the excessive hype around Cloud Computing during 2008. Read More…

Posted under Hardware Virtualization, Server Virtualization, Virtualization News, Virtualization Strategies

Research company IDC today released it latest study on Green IT. For the second year in a row IDC has found IT managers’ leading reason for adopting Green IT technologies has to do with reducing energy cost. Even though recent economic issues have reduced oil prices back down to $80 a barrel, energy cost are still a major concern for data center managers.

Other interesting finding from the study are that most IT managers expect to pay more for Green IT products. This makes sense as IT managers will get a better ROI from a high capacity virtualized server, than several lost cost dedicated servers. In the end the IT manager can reduce the number of servers and related IT hardware in the data center. This leads to reductions in real estate, power and cooling requirements, resulting in significantly lower IT costs. This is good news for the IT vendor community as well because a high end virtualized blade servers has a higher margins.

Other reason IT manager are looking to “go green” with their IT planning is from pressure from upper management. This may have a lot to do with the fact that “being green” is good for a company’s reputation. More and more customers are looking for green suppliers of their goods and services. There is also a concern that governments will regulate a companies carbon foot print and use of renewable energy.

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Posted under Cloud Computing, Data Center Virtualization, Green IT, Hardware Virtualization, Server Virtualization, Virtualization Case Studies, Virtualization News, Virtualization Software, Virtualization Strategies

According to IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Server Virtualization Tracker, worldwide virtualization license shipments in the second quarter of 2008 (2Q08) increased 53% year over year. The x86 server market led the way with 60% year-over-year growth followed by the EPIC server market with 18% growth.

“Quarterly totals of x86 server virtualization licenses continue to experience healthy growth, although the growth rates have slowed over the last four quarters. The modest decline in growth rates indicates that the market is showing early signs of maturation,” said Brett Waldman, research analyst for System Software at IDC. “Based on our conversations with end users, IDC believes that the high-volume consolidation opportunities – the low hanging fruit in the x86 server virtualization market – is starting to dry up. This is, in turn, resulting in smaller deals overall.”

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Posted under Hardware Virtualization, Server Virtualization, Virtualization News, Virtualization Software

Gartner Analyst concludes that virtualization is the most strategic technology trend for IT and business. Each year Gartner analyst examines the latest industry trends during their symposium and highlights the 10 most impactful technologies.

Gartner defines a strategic technology as one with the potential for significant impact on the enterprise in the next three years. Factors that denote significant impact include a high potential for disruption to IT or the business, the need for a major dollar investment, or the risk of being late to adopt. These technologies impact the organization’s long-term plans, programs and initiatives. They may be strategic because they enable strategic advantage from early adoption.

In forecasting the impact of the economy on IT spending, Gartner put virtualization near the top of must-have technologies. To date much of the focus has been on server virtualization, but virtualization also has many benefits in other areas such storage. Gartner analyst Carl Claunch said that in storage, for instance, virtualization allows users to “to combine different kinds and generations of storage technology.” That gives them the freedom to mix and match storage technologies based on competitive bids.

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Posted under Cloud Computing, Green IT, Server Virtualization, Storage Virtualization, Virtualization News, Virtualization Strategies