Virtualisation and multicore disrupt server deployments

Virtualisation technologies and multi-core chip architectures are " dramatically" disrupting x86-based server deployment patterns, IDC reported today.

The analyst firm said that multi-core and virtualisation will cost the x86 market more than 4.5 million shipments, and $2.4bn in customer spending, between 2006 and 2010.

Overall x86 shipments, once projected to increase 61 per cent by 2010, are now facing just 39 per cent growth during that same period.

"The server market is at a crossroads and customer buying behaviour is increasingly driven by the strategic business benefit of the IT investment rather than a singular focus on cost containment," said Matt Eastwood, programme vice president for IDC's Enterprise Platforms Group.

"In today's business environment, it is clear that technologies such as virtualisation and multi-core are particularly important enablers for the consolidated IT infrastructure that IT organisations are increasingly seeking to deploy."

Michelle Bailey, research vice president for IDC's Enterprise Platforms and Datacenter Trends, added: "Each of these technologies will have an impact on the market in their own right.

"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 organisations to exploit the benefits of multi-core technology.

"Unlike other previous multi-core 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."

IDC believes that server and component vendors will optimise around quad-core technology before moving ahead to octi-core technology.

The analyst's report predicts that, despite the decline in the number of physical shipments over the forecast period, growth in the number of effective processors continues to climb at a 25 per cent annual rate due to multi-core technology advances.

The number of virtual servers will rise dramatically, according to the research, enjoying a compound annual growth rate of 40.6 per cent during 2005-2010.

By the end of this forecast period more than 1.7 million physical servers will be shipped for virtualisation activities resulting in 7.9 million logical servers.