Virtualisation to be Hot Through 2010

By Greg McNevin

January 10, 2008: According to new research from Ireland’s Research and Markets, virtualisation is set to make the single largest impact on both the hardware and support sides of IT budgets through 2010.

In a new report titled “The Many Faces of Virtualization: Understanding a New IT Reality to their offering”, the firm claims that IT execs are turning virtualisation into the hottest topic in years after being dazzled by promises of dramatic reductions in the cost and complexity of infrastructure.

However, R&M claims that the general concept of virtualisation is frequently equated with server virtualisation (or mainframe virtualisation) specifically, as this has been a fixture of the IT landscape for decades.

The company adds that the situation is somewhat exacerbated as IT vendors move to cash in on the growing popularity of virtualisation, introducing an array of solutions for every situation and unfortunately giving rise to a “cacophony of terms [that] can leave users overwhelmed or confused.”

The research is attempting to highlight the most important aspects of virtualisation, and that it can be applied to all IT resources, from servers to storage to networks to desktops and is not one-size-fits-all.

The company says that the most significant boosts will come in the form of in virtualisation of hypervisor and operating system functions, and claims that through 2010 Cisco, VMware, and XenSource (now Citrix) will be the major virtualisation players with 60 percent of the market.

The report also notes that virtualisation poses a revenue threat to vendors ofmicroprocessors, servers, Operating Systems, Middleware, and applications.

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