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Survey: VMware Remains Dominant Virtualization Platform
At a time when VMware faces intense competition from Citrix, Microsoft, Oracle, Red Hat and other aspiring virtualization companies, here's an eye-popping statistic: Roughly 83 percent of customers consider VMware their virtualization platform of choice, according to a survey conducted by CommVault.
The VAR Guy
August 31, 2010
3 Min Read
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At a time when VMware faces intense competition from Citrix, Microsoft, Oracle, Red Hat and other aspiring virtualization companies, here’s an eye-popping statistic: Roughly 83 percent of customers consider VMware their virtualization platform of choice, according to a survey conducted by CommVault. Here are some deeper details, plus other daily highlights from this week’s VMworld conference in San Francisco.First up, the CommVault survey, which involved 479 participants. Among the feedback, according to CommVault:
A total of 479 respondents underscored the continued rise in server virtualization, with 46 percent of those polled citing that between 51- and 85-percent of their total servers were virtualized while 21 percent reported successful virtualization of all or nearly all servers.
VMware was listed as the virtualization platform of choice by 83 percent of those polled.
The survey revealed that the top three factors driving server virtualization decisions among the respondents are: the need for improved business cost savings and efficiencies, customer responsiveness and improved service levels. The opportunity to leverage virtualization as an alternative disaster recovery strategy was also cited.
Of course, it’s important to keep one-time surveys in perspective. Does CommVault’s customer base have an artificial concentration of VMware customers? Would a survey of Microsoft- or Citrix-centric customers reveal different stats? Hmmm… plenty of questions for The VAR Guy and his readers to ponder.
Microsoft: VMware’s Top Rival?
Predictably, Microsoft has a differing view of the virtualization market. During the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference (July 2010), Chief Operating Officer Kevin Turner pointed to third-party research, indicating that Microsoft had captured 24.4 percent of the virtualization market, up about 6.1 points in recent months. VMware, he said at the time, stood at about 48.8 percent. “We’re cross-platform. We run VMware,” Turner told the WPC audience. “They’re not cross-platform.”
And over at Red Hat, CEO Jim Whitehurst has been predicting that Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV), built atop KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) will eventually leapfrog VMware the way Linux leapfrogged Sun Solaris.
The VAR Guy expects to get a timely virtualization update from Microsoft later today.
Elsewhere at VMworld
Meanwhile, the VMworld news keeps coming. For instance:
Avere System’s Avere FXT 2700 has earned VMware Ready Status. The appliance is designed to work with Avere’s NAS and Demand-Driven Storage solutions, for dynamic high-performance environments.
Similarly, the Compuware Vantage solution has gotten the VMware Ready stamp of approval. Compuware sees their application performance management solution linking with VMware’s vCenter, allowing companies to optimize the information and performance they need for virtual apps.
Both Avere and Compuware solutions are now in the VMware Partner Product Catalog here.
Additional reporting by David Courbanou. Sign up for The VAR Guy’s Newsletter; Webcasts and Resource Center; and via RSS; Facebook; Identi.ca; Twitter and VARtweet.
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