Virtualisation Takes Bite out of Server Industry

By Greg McNevin

March 23, 2007: According to the analysts at IDC, the number of servers being shipping is dropping and will continue to drop due to a surge in the use of virtualisation and multi-core processors.

IDC reckons that between 2006 and 2010 4.5 million servers will disappear from the market as virtualisation and multi-core processors are increasingly deployed by companies looking to get more bang for their buck.

However, the use of multi-core technology in conjunction with server virtualisation tools has a compounding impact on server configurations, and accelerates the ability of IT organizations to exploit the benefits of multi-core technology," said Michelle Bailey, research vice president for IDC's Enterprise Platforms and Datacenter Trends.

"Unlike other previous multicore introductions that took time to become mainstream as customers changed their application code, virtualisation allows customers to fully exploit the improvements in x86 processors immediately, accelerating business benefits and thereby increasing adoption rates."

To take into account the surge in enthusiasm for multicore/virtualisation computing, IDC has adjusted its own forecasts for x86-based shipments. Originally it divined an increase of 61 percent by 2010, it has dropped this prediction considerably to 39 percent. This marks big savings for customers making the switch, however, it also translate to a loss of around US$2.4 billion for the server industry.

Customers will hardly shed a tear for the industry though, as an abundance of CPU power and virtualisations enables them to do far more with less and make savings by not only purchasing less machines, but also by using less power, less space and less resources overall.

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