| Virtualization is not a new concept, but it is changing the computing industry in a profound way. Server virtualization is now #1 on enterprises’ budget lists. According to analysts, it will continue to be the highest impact trend, changing infrastructure and operations through 2012.
Virtualization became popular for two reasons. First, the hardware (especially x86–based servers) capacity has increased so much that most servers are under utilized. The market demand is strong for consolidating servers and saving operation and management cost. Virtualization has clearly provided a proven solution for this demand. Second, the social awareness of environment protection and energy saving has put green technology into the spotlight. Virtualization addresses this social requirement well by saving electricity consumption.
Today, more than 4 million virtual machines are installed. With the acceleration of hypervisor toward commodity because of increased competition, even more virtual machines will be running along the way.
In this virtualization game, VMware is by far the market leader, with 100 percent coverage of Fortune 100 enterprises. In 2007, the company achieved $1.3 billion revenue and has been growing steadily about 80 percent since its inception in 1998. There were 100,000 customers and 10,000 partners in 2008. The VMware annual conference, VMworld, attracted more than 14,000 attendees in 2008. |