study

Another Study Predicts Huge and Rapid Virtualization Market Growth

April 7, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Application Delivery Networking provider F5 Networks today released the results of another survey that shows the storage virtualization market is set to grow rapidly. The online study reveals the percentage of U.S. enterprises that use storage virtualization solutions will more than double from 21 % to 47 % in the next few years.

The survey of 324 medium- and large-enterprise IT organizations in the U.S. and Europe was conducted in February and found that a primary driver for enterprise interest in storage virtualization is reduction in operating expense and capital investment. Underscoring their interest in reducing costs, respondents indicated that 20 % of IT labor is spent on storage-related activities such as provisioning, backup, and moving data.

“We continue to see enterprise storage requirements grow at a remarkable rate, particularly for file-based, unstructured data,” said Steve Bishop, CTO at VeriStor Systems. “As a solutions provider specializing in advanced data storage and virtualization architectures, VeriStor is constantly seeking ways to help our customers reduce storage costs, improve resource utilization, and simplify storage administration. Technologies such as F5’s Intelligent File Virtualization are key to enabling those types of solutions.”

Other findings from the survey included:

Respondents stressed the need for storage virtualization solutions to work with a heterogeneous storage infrastructure. Sixty-three percent of U.S. companies rated this as important or very important.
Respondents showed a strong interest in solutions that address file-based storage — with 80 percent of respondents who are planning to deploy storage virtualization confirming this as part of their plan.
Existing storage virtualization users reported high success rates. Eighty-six percent of all U.S. companies reported achieving at least one or more of their original goals.

For additional survey information and results, please download the PDF from the following location: www.f5.com/pdf/news/20080404-state-of-storage-virtualization.pdf.

[Source: press release]

Saugatuck Technologies on ‘The Many Faces of Virtualization’

January 24, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Consulting and research firm Saugatuck Technologies published a report last December dubbed ‘The Many Faces of Virtualization – Understanding a New IT Reality ‘, proclaiming that virtualization will have the single largest effect on IT budgets for hardware and support over the next three years and that by 2010, the 3 main vendors (VMWare, Cisco & Citrix / XenSource) will dominate the IT virtualization industry.

Another important finding of the study is that all facets of IT virtualization will see substantial enhancements in functionality and performance, with the most significant enhancements being in microprocessors, hypervisors and operating systems.

The report notes that the general concept of virtualization is usually equated with the specifics of server virtualization, since server and mainframe virtualization have been used in the IT world for decades. But it’s important to note that virtualization can be applied to all IT resources, including servers, storage, networks, and desktops.

“This study is the first attempt that we’ve seen to use real-world expertise and practicality to classify and explain the types and effects of IT virtualisation, in terms that both user and vendor executives can understand, and can profit from,” said Saugatuck founder and CEO Bill McNee. “This is a solid foundation from which executives can educate themselves, and begin planning more effective management of virtualisation.”

Server Virtualization Goes Mainstream

April 11, 2006 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Latest Forrester study on virtualization.

According to a recent Forrester study, server virtualization has quickly surpassed other forms of infrastructure virtualization, including techniques for virtualizing storage and networks.

Globally, 75% of 1,221 enterprises surveyed by Forrester say they are aware of server virtualization technologies, 26% have implemented it, and 8% more will pilot it by the summer of 2006.

The rapid adoption of server virtualization can be attributed to its near- and long-term advantages, which allow firms to reduce costs while making their infrastructures more flexible over time. Unlike compute grid technologies, which require architectural changes, server virtualization allows firms to easily encapsulate existing applications into containers that can be moved between physical servers. Forrester believes that this basic capability will prime firms’ data centers for more advanced Organic IT technologies, including automated configuration and distributed workload management.

This Forrester report provides some interesting figures:

* Worldwide Enterprise Awareness Of Server Virtualization Hits 75%
* North American Firms Lead In Adoption Of Server Virtualization
* More Than Half Of The Largest NA Firms Use Or Will Pilot Server Virtualization
* Europe Lags In Awareness But Is Second Overall In Adoption
* In Asia Pacific, Awareness Of Server Virtualization Ranks Second Overall
* VMware Dominates In North America But Microsoft Leads In Europe
* Microsoft Gets More Consideration From Large Enterprises Than Other Enterprises

You can read the full executive summary or order this study at the Forrester source.