Virtualization.com

News and insights from the vibrant world of virtualization and cloud computing

research

Research and Markets’ Latest Report: “Vendor Landscape: Virtualization Competition Heats Up”

by Leave a Comment

Via VMBlog comes word of a new report from Research and Markets titled: “Vendor Landscape: Virtualization Competition Heats Up”:

“VMware retains its leadership position in this updated vendor landscape of virtualization software. However, the virtualization market has seen greatly increased competition in 2008. Microsoft has emerged as a legitimate competitor through its release of the Hyper-V hypervisor and Citrix has stormed onto the scene with its acquisition of XenSource.

This research note provides an overview of the x86 server virtualization landscape and addresses how the vendors meet the following key selection criteria:

-Vendor and product maturity.
-Advanced features and suitability for a utility infrastructure.
-Cost of licensing.

VMware remains in the leadership zone due to its market share and continued innovation toward comprehensive data center virtualization. However, where VMware was the only game in town a few short years ago, now the competition has become serious. Going into 2009, expect continued feature innovation and pressure on pricing. ”

Gartner Analysts: Virtualization Will Be Disruptive For Server And Storage Vendors

by Leave a Comment

This comes from the 27th Annual Gartner Data Center Conference, which opened at the MGM Grand Conference Center in Las Vegas: virtualization is proving to be a disruptive trend for server and storage vendors, according to Gartner analysts.

“Virtualization should be seen as not just a tool for (server) consolidation, but as a modernization catalyst,” said Thomas Bittman, a Gartner VP and Chief of Research for its Infrastructure and operations area. “It’s changing how we deal with the business.”

As DataCenterKnowledge points out, Bittman foresees the emergence of a “meta operating system” – a virtualization layer between applications and distributed computing resources that will play a central role in the next-generation data center.

[Read more…] about Gartner Analysts: Virtualization Will Be Disruptive For Server And Storage Vendors

KACE Study: Virtualization Gains Momentum With SMBs

by 1 Comment

KACE today announced the results of a new study that revealed more than three quarters of medium enterprises have adopted some form of virtualization. In addition the research showed the fastest growing area for virtualization is application virtualization, with 64 percent of medium organizations reporting they have either deployed or plan to do so in the next year. Also uncovered is the need for an integrated solution for systems management and virtualization. Seventy-one percent prefer to combine their systems management tools for both virtual and physical systems in a single, integrated product and many prefer their systems management tools offer integrated application virtualization management capabilities.

The research, consisting of an online survey of more than 500 respondents, the majority from medium-sized enterprises, was conducted by King Research and commissioned by KACE to gather data about the current state of virtualization adoption among medium enterprises. Focusing on hot-button issues such as growth of adoption, barriers to deployment, the importance of managing mixed physical and virtual IT environments, and specific areas of virtualization growth, the research revealed adoption of virtualization among the medium enterprise proved to be as rapid as enterprise adoption.
A summary of the key findings from the study include:
— 64 percent reported they have adopted or plan to adopt application virtualization in the near future, making application virtualization the fastest growing virtualization segment among medium enterprises surveyed;
— 85 percent of respondents revealed they have deployed virtualization technologies or plan to do so within the next twelve months;
— A reduction in hardware requirements was cited by 82 percent as the primary benefit they have achieved with virtualization;
— Over half reported cost savings as the most important consideration when justifying the cost of virtualization;
— 71 percent of respondents who have deployed application virtualization technologies cited they prefer systems management tools for virtual and physical systems offered in a single, integrated product;
— 86 percent felt that virtualization has had a positive impact on them personally — almost half cited they could do more with their budgets due directly to virtualization.
Survey metholodogy
A database of IT professionals was emailed and invited to participate in a Web survey on the topic of virtualization. A total of 519 respondents completed the survey representing hands-on IT professionals (36 percent), IT managers (32 percent), IT executives (2 percent) and others. This survey focused primarily on the responses of the 291 participants (56 percent) from mid-sized companies, those with 100-5000 employees.
The survey was conducted using Zoomerang, an online survey tool. Respondents were not compensated for participating in this survey except to be offered a copy of the final report. This survey was sponsored by KACE, a provider of IT automation appliances.

Research and Markets Releases “All About Implementing Virtualization” Report

by Leave a Comment

Research and Markets has announced the addition of the “All About Implementing Virtualization” report to their offering.

Featuring:
Assessing Candidate Servers for Virtualization
This assessment tool provides a high-level view of the current infrastructure in the context of technical, business, and operational readiness. Use this tool to decide which servers are ideal candidates for virtualization as well as which servers should await further planning and development.
All About Implementing Virtualization goes a step further by pairing the assessment tool with tactical and practical research notes so you know what to do next and how to do it.
Also Included:
— Five Pitfalls of Virtualization and How to Avoid Them – The road to server virtualization and consolidation is not without its potholes. Examined are five common virtualization implementation challenges and how they can be mitigated. Very few virtualization challenges are purely technical, but rather stem from shortfalls in planning. Do not take an ad hoc approach to virtualization. Avoid the pitfalls by focusing on application provisioning and capacity planning.
— Virtual Servers Planning Goals: Take a Baby Bear Approach – In a typical scenario, a modest 100-server shop will not be moved to server virtualization by a strategic imperative. Rather, the trigger will be the acquisition of partitionable x86 servers as part of a regular hardware refresh. Planning can make the difference between this implementation being a one-off effort with limited return on investment or the beginning of a new way of managing infrastructure that has significant cost and service benefits.
— Virtualization Scope Analysis Worksheet (Tool) – The most often cited challenges to virtualization are related to people and processes, not technology. Take some time to think about all the people and processes that would be impacted by virtualization. Use this downloadable worksheet to identify goals, dependencies, opportunities, and potential barriers to virtual machine adoption.
— Virtualization Project Definition Template (Tool) – Info-Tech sees the best approach to large scale virtual server implementation as one that combines planning for a foundational virtual infrastructure with careful and incremental adoption. Having employed the ITA Premium “Virtualization Scope Analysis” worksheet to consider who and what will be impacted by virtualization, use this template to develop a long-term project definition for virtualization.
— Business and Operational Assessment for Virtual Server Implementation – Business and operational assessments are as critical for virtual server implementation as is the technical assessment that identifies virtualization candidates. People and process issues are more likely to be an impediment to implementation than technical limitations. Identify and resolve these issues through assessments that establish baselines business and operational measures for virtualization success.
— Technical Assessment of Candidates for Virtual Server Implementation – Technical assessment of current server infrastructure is one of three critical assessments necessary for an effective virtual server implementation. The other important assessments are a business assessment and an IT operational assessment. The important results of the technical assessment will be a list of virtualization candidate servers, and baseline utilization data for capacity planning of the virtual machine infrastructure.
— Just Do It: Server Virtualization without Planning? – The best approach to virtual server implementation combines planning for a foundational virtual infrastructure with careful, incremental adoption. While planning is critical, don’t let external involvement bog down or stall initial implementation efforts. Use a business and operational assessment to define the trigger point for the larger planning effort.

Gartner Identifies the Top 10 Strategic Technologies for 2009, Virtualization and Cloud Computing Rule

by Leave a Comment

Gartner analysts today highlighted the top 10 technologies and trends that will be strategic for most organizations. The analysts presented their findings during Gartner Symposium/ITxpo, being held through October 16.

Gartner defines a strategic technology as one with the potential for significant impact on the enterprise in the next three years. Factors that denote significant impact include a high potential for disruption to IT or the business, the need for a major dollar investment, or the risk of being late to adopt.
These technologies impact the organization’s long-term plans, programs and initiatives. They may be strategic because they have matured to broad market use or because they enable strategic advantage from early adoption.
The top 10 strategic technologies for 2009 include:
Virtualization
“Much of the current buzz is focused on server virtualization, but virtualization in storage and client devices is also moving rapidly. Virtualization to eliminate duplicate copies of data on the real storage devices while maintaining the illusion to the accessing systems that the files are as originally stored (data deduplication) can significantly decrease the cost of storage devices and media to hold information. Hosted virtual images deliver a near-identical result to blade-based PCs. But, instead of the motherboard function being located in the data center as hardware, it is located there as a virtual machine bubble. However, despite ambitious deployment plans from many organizations, deployments of hosted virtual desktop capabilities will be adopted by fewer than 40 percent of target users by 2010.”
Cloud Computing
“Cloud computing is a style of computing that characterizes a model in which providers deliver a variety of IT-enabled capabilities to consumers. They key characteristics of cloud computing are 1) delivery of capabilities “as a service,” 2) delivery of services in a highly scalable and elastic fashion, 3) using Internet technologies and techniques to develop and deliver the services, and 4) designing for delivery to external customers. Although cost is a potential benefit for small companies, the biggest benefits are the built-in elasticity and scalability, which not only reduce barriers to entry, but also enable these companies to grow quickly. As certain IT functions are industrializing and becoming less customized, there are more possibilities for larger organizations to benefit from cloud computing.”

VMware Creates GoVirtual.org, Community Site for Virtualization Academics and Researchers

by Leave a Comment

VMware has created a new community site specifically for virtualization researchers and academics, dubbed GoVirtual.org. The website contains technical papers, courseware, software, and other tools needed to facilitate global knowledge-sharing around the topic of virtualization.

According to VMware, the new community site is intended to provide research and instruction on virtualization-related topics by enabling the sharing of ideas, results, materials, and tools among its members. The site is described as a comprehensive resource and knowledge base where members of academia can go to find the latest research and interact with leading researchers.

The community supports blogs and discussion forums for members to communicate with each other. It also provides a list of academic- and research-oriented virtualization conferences. To help educators and students with their virtualization research projects, the site includes a download section with source code and software tools. And it also includes a collection of several technical papers as well as freely available courseware. The 25 free courses currently being made available include concepts such as the basics of virtualization, interpretation and binary translation, I/O architectures of virtualization, and binary optimization.

Universities such as Carnegie Mellon University, Ecole Polytechnique Federale De Lausanne (EPFL), Georgia Tech, Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and University of California at Berkeley are said to be already benefiting from the VMware Academic Program.

VMware