State of Virtualization

Latest data on the state of virtualization from presentation today by Barb Goldworm, President and Chief Analyst of Focus:

Drivers – Why are businesses implementing virtualization?

1. Disaster recovery
2. Consolidation
3. Increase Server Utilization
4. Reduce space and power
5. Increase availability
6. Improve IT
7. Improve Management

The recent change to disaster recovery as primary driver is a result of small businesses that before could not justify the cost. In enterprise space consolidation is still the primary driver.

Actual businesses benefits reported:

1. Increase utilization
2. Reduce space and power
3. Reduce total cost of ownership
4. Increase return on investment
5. Improved agility

In either case businesses do realize the benefit and are moving to a virtual environment rapidly.
80% of companies have adopted virtualization to some degree
95% of companies have either adopted or are planning or implementing

How much of the server environment is virtualized:

1/3 Less than 20%
1/3 between 20% - 40%
1/3 40 – 100%

Only 9% have virtualized more than 80% of their Servers.

Barriers to Virtualization:

1. Budget
2. Applications don’t support virtualization
3. Performance concerns
4. Applications are hard to virtualize
5. Storage issues
6. Skill set to implement and support
7. Security

Next I will post on virtualization management and then the direction of the industry.

Source: Focus – http://www.focusonsystems.com/