Virtualization alternatives to VMware increasingly popular among customers 7 December, 2009 By Mark Cox

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VMware is still the leading vendor in use and in plan for server virtualization, with just over 75% of users reporting having VMware in use today. Few users report firm plans to switch from VMware to Hyper-V. However, nearly two-thirds have tested a hypervisor other than VMware, with Microsoft and Citrix most often mentioned. TheInfoPro believes this parallel deployment of Hyper-V, Citrix and Red Hat virtualization capabilities could signal a challenge to VMware's dominance, because it implies that heterogeneous environments will be commonplace, where VMware is used for production, and Hyper-V may grow through deployments for development and testing.

Of those who have tested an alternative, 27% plan to use the alternative, while an additional 20% report they "may" use it.

When VMware customers were asked if they would switch to an alternative, only 2% cited firm plans, while an additional 9% were considering it. The analysis reveals that VMware users aren't switching away from VMware, but are probably embracing competing technologies in heterogeneous deployments.

"Much of the strength of the VMware story is predicated on a homogeneous population of VMware servers under control of VMware management utilities," said Bob Gill, managing director of server research for TheInfoPro. "The more heterogeneous the environment, the less VMware is positioned in the central infrastructural layer in the data center."

This study showed that growth in infrastructure server software deployments, such as operating systems and virtualization software, continues much more strongly than growth in hardware units, driven by the efficiencies derived from server virtualization. Growth in the number of virtual machines deployed implies growth in virtualization software licenses, as well as for the OS instances required for each virtual machine.

Eighty-three percent (83%) of respondents now report virtual machine software for midtier/application servers in use somewhere within their organization. This widespread deployment is illustrative of virtualization's movement from strictly development and test applications to production applications.

Cloud/utility computing scored well, based on the 13% who report it in long-term plan, but the vendors cited reflect an even split between respondents who are describing internal cloud development and those who are referring to using an external cloud provider.