European enterprises embrace server virtualisation

Server virtualisation is becoming "firmly entrenched" in large European organisations, industry experts have reported today.

A new study by IDC's European Systems and Infrastructure Research Group found that adoption of the technology is expanding at a "significant rate".

"Virtual server technology has been a feature of IT systems for a very long time, having started in the mainframe data centre as a way to create logical partitions within a large computing resource so that each partition could run a specific workload without interfering with the others," said Nathaniel Martinez, programme manager at IDC.

"However, faced with mounting pressure to constantly deliver new applications at a lower cost, more rapidly and with a higher level of availability, enterprise data centres naturally turn to server virtualisation to optimise IT resources."

The IDC study reveals a widespread adoption of server virtualisation spanning x86 and non-x86 server environments.

On average, seven per cent of installed servers for this sample were virtualised, and respondents reported that 69 per cent of servers purchased in the past 12 months were virtualised.

The research goes on to note that enterprises expect 49 per cent of new servers purchased next year to be virtualised.

According to IDC, the services industry is showing the highest propensity to rely on the technology.

In terms of operating systems, Linux represents the most likely target for virtualisation closely followed by Windows.

"Virtualisation is already impacting European server sales," said Thomas Meyer, vice president of IDC's European Systems and Infrastructure Solutions group.

"According to data from IDC's European Quarterly Server Tracker, over the past six quarters there has been a steady decline in the growth rates of worldwide x86 shipments.

"While typical year-over-year shipment growth rates averaged 20 to 25 per cent in previous years, during 2006 this growth slowed to single digits.

"In the fourth quarter of 2006, Western European x86 server shipment growth was only 1.8 per cent over the same period a year ago."

IDC anticipates the number of virtualised servers to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 55 per cent to 1.1 million shipments in 2011, representing 52 per cent of the forecast 2.19 million server shipments for that period. This will be equivalent to 5.4 million logical servers (i.e. partitions deployed in 2011).

The analyst firm forecasts customer revenue from virtualised server sales in Western Europe to grow from $948m in 2006 to $5.5bn in 2011.

"Virtualisation, along with automation and systems management, represents a major cornerstone of current IT investment from large IT organisations," said Meyer.

"These technologies represent the three pillars enabling the direct connection of IT operations with what is happening on the business process side. "

Martinez added that European organisations view the virtualisation of system resources as a technology that has the potential to change the dynamics through which organisations consume IT resources.

"And, in many ways, it is quickly becoming a de facto component of their IT fabric," he said.

However, to fully harness the value that this technology can unlock, virtualisation alone is not sufficient. IT organisations need to consider change management and system management tools to optimise their virtual IT environments.