Virtualization ‘cornerstone technology’ post-recession: IDC

Peter Dinham
Wednesday, 28 October 2009 08:04

IT Industry - Market

The global server market has endured a rocky road during the worldwide recession but there are now signs of the market stabilising, with virtualization forecast to be the cornerstone technology as medium and large enterprises accelerate the need for more dynamic and converged infrastructure designed to support the business needs of the next economic cycle.

According to IDC’s worldwide quarterly server virtualization  tracker, 16.5 percent of all new servers shipped in the second quarter this year were virtualized, an increase from 14.5 percent, and there are indications of the market recovering as customer adoption expands.

However, IDC does say that actual shipments decreased 21.0 percent year over year to 246,000 physical servers in 2Q09 as customers continue to “limit spending on new server hardware relative to last year.”

Similarly, IDC found that worldwide virtualization software revenue declined 18.7 percent year over year in 2Q09 to $344 million, but hat virtualization licenses did grow quarter over quarter in 2Q09.
 
The server virtualization market continues to shift towards the use of paid hypervisors, according to IDC, with paid virtualization software now running on 60.8 percent of all new server hardware shipments virtualized in 2Q09, an increase over 57.2 percent in 2Q08.

Matt Eastwood, group vice president of enterprise platforms at IDC, said that,  in the second quarter IDC observed a number of signs indicating that stability is beginning to take hold in the worldwide server market," adding that "the worldwide server installed base has aged significantly and virtual machine densities on these systems have increased sharply over the past year.

“As a result, the market is poised for the beginning of a significant infrastructure refresh cycle in the months ahead. IDC believes that virtualization will be a cornerstone technology as medium and large enterprise organizations around the globe accelerate the need for more dynamic and converged infrastructure designed to support the business needs of the next economic cycle."

CONTINUED page 2