TheInfoPro

07 December 2009 – Bob Gill, Managing Director of Server Research and Advisory Services - Today we released our new Fall 2009 Server Study which still reflects a depressed server hardware market due to the recession, priority to consolidate and virtualization implementation.

The study however did show that growth in infrastructure server software deployments, such as operating systems and virtualization software, continues much more strongly than growth in hardware units, driven by the efficiencies derived from server virtualization.

Growth in the number of virtual machines deployed implies growth in virtualization software licenses, as well as for the OS instances required for each virtual machine.

A more interesting situation in the server market is brewing between VMware and Microsoft. Much of the strength of VMware is predicated on a homogeneous population of VMware servers under control of VMware management utilities. So you figure, the more heterogeneous the environment, the less VMware is positioned in the central infrastructural layer in the data center. Trouble for VMware, no, but there will be some of the market up for grabs.

Our press release today titled, “New Server Study Shows Threat to VMware Hegemony as Customers Plan Parallel Deployments of Microsoft and Virtualization Alternatives”  stated that while just over 75% of users report having VMware in use today, nearly two-thirds have tested a hypervisor other than VMware, with Microsoft and Citrix most often mentioned. Of those who have tested an alternative, 27% plan to use the alternative, while an additional 20% report they “may” use it.

When VMware customers were asked if they would switch to an alternative, only 2% cited firm plans, while an additional 9% were considering it. The analysis reveals that VMware users aren’t switching away from VMware, but are probably embracing competing technologies in heterogeneous deployments.

VMware is still the leading vendor in use and in plan for server virtualization, and few users report firm plans to switch from VMware to Hyper-V. However, this parallel deployment of Hyper-V, Citrix and Red Hat virtualization capabilities could signal a challenge to VMware’s dominance; this implies that heterogeneous environments will be commonplace, where VMware is used for production, and Hyper-V may grow through deployments for development and testing.

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