IDC Virtualization Forecast: Onward and Upward

IDC recently predicted that, over the next four years, virtualization will penetrate the ranks from the high-end and mainframe market to the x86 and x64 server market. And as virtualization grows ever more popular, more companies will require services to go with it — including education, training, and help with initial implementations. IT consulting and systems integration will eventually take a larger piece of the virtualization services pie as companies’ needs advance beyond implementation strategies.

That’s not the end of the virtualization story — at least, not as far as IDC is concerned. IDC analyst Chris Ingles recently said at a VMware event in London that “virtualization is not just ‘tinkering at the edges’ but supporting day-to-day business processes,” according to ITPro. Apparently, a growing number of enterprise servers are virtualized and being used for more than just backups or secondary systems.

The ITPro article also mentions “a trend of firms buying fewer but larger — and more expensive — servers,” which goes to further IDC’s argument that the virtualization services market is growing. After all, a business with a massive new high-end server is probably going to be just as eager as a business with a new x64 to find out how to virtualize it.