IT plans future growth while using and adding virtualization

by Steve Ragan - Sep 2 2009, 18:35

Times are still tough for some IT shops. Server sales are in a slight slump, as many organizations are transforming existing hardware stock into virtualized systems and consolidating so they can get through 2009. This information and more comes as a preview for a new study from TheInfoPro, due later this year.

According to the preview results from TheInfoPro’s Server Study, more than 50-percent of new servers being installed by many IT shops this year are going to host virtualization. Moreover, future server purchases are planned to increase this move to a virtual platform by more than 80-percent in 2012. These figures come from interviews with 195 IT professionals from various Fortune 1000 companies and midsize enterprises in North America and Europe.

According to the various IT pros representing the various organizations, 22-percent of them are expecting spending increases this year, while 34-percent are expecting decreases. In each case, to get the most “bang” for their budget buck, they are turning to virtualization.  Three-quarters of all respondents said that the consolidation afforded by server virtualization has allowed them to buy less server hardware and still meet their application goals.

Point in case, many of those questioned by TheInfoPro indicated that they would be spending more for VMware and Red Hat licensing in 2009, with 41-percent and 30-percent respectively. The hardware vendor of choice seems to be Hewlett-Packard, as long as the economy stabilizes. If that happens, more than half of those surveyed said they plan to resume hardware acquisition.

What is interesting, looking at the data sent over by TheInfoPro, is that many of the IT shops represented admitted to shopping around. Two-thirds of them in fact report testing an alternative hypervisor, with slightly more than half reporting a possibility of using that alternative in some capacity.

Surprisingly, noted the survey outline, 45-percent of users report considering a mixed set of technologies for x86-virtualization, such as Microsoft’s Hyper-V in conjunction with VMware. This is despite the inability of such environments to share resources, efficiencies, or even management tools. Only 42-percent expect a single tool will be up to scratch to manage such environments.

One thing is certain, the next two or three years will be interesting to say the least, as IT evolves from stacks and racks to consolidated environments.

The preview results were announced by TheInfoPro at VMWorld 2009. The full results and study will be published in Q3 2009.

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