Virtualisation sales have been dented by the recessionproving that no markets are immune to the economic maelstrom, but a massiverefresh pending in the server market should give resellers a reason to becheerful.
Server sales have dived this year as companies delayedreplacing ageing infrastructures and virtualisation, which had been tipped asalmost recession proof, saw an 18.7% drop in Q2 global revenues to $344m.
According to IDC, 16.5% of all servers shipped in the quarterwere virtualised, up from 14.5% a year ago and the market continues to shifttoward paid hypervisors, now running on 60.8% of new shipments.
“In the second quarter IDC observed a number of signsindicating that stability is beginning to take hold in the worldwide servermarket,” said Matt Eastwood, IDC group vice president for the enterprise group.
“The worldwide server installed base has aged significantlyand virtual machine densities on these systems have increased sharply over thepast year. As a result the market is poised for the beginning of a significantinfrastructure refresh cycle.”
Only last week rival market watcher Gartner said 1 millionservers due to be swapped out this year had been put on the back burner bybusinesses while an additional 1 million is due to be replaced in 2010.
In server consolidation projects, virtualisation has changedforever the way customers manage their data centres, becoming the “default” modelwhen deploying new servers.
However, IDC research vice president Michelle Bailey saidthe “next phase of virtualisation will require a reinvention of IT policies andprocedures and continued adoption of automation tools will be key as virtualmachine densities rise and customers find themselves facing virtual serversprawls”.
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