Virtualization trends in 2007 and industry predictions for 2008

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As usual at virtualization.info the last post of the year reviews how virtualization grew, which trends emerged and where the industry seems to go through the numbers achieved in the last 12 months.

First of all the look for virtualization contents continues to increase, with a healthy 50% growth from previous year:

Excluding a couple of new entries (which replaced Switzerland and Japan), top countries showing interest in virtualization didn’t change since 2006:

  1. US
  2. UK
  3. Germany
  4. Canada
  5. Netherlands
  6. Italy
  7. France
  8. Australia
  9. Spain [NEW]
  10. Sweden [NEW]

Most visited posts during 2007 reveal new interests among readers:

  1. How to create a new virtual machine with VMware Player (and related: Guide to create .vmx files for VMware Player, How to launch ISO and use LiveCDs inside VMware Player, Create VMware VMX configuration files easily, VMX Builder for VMware Player)
  2. How to install Sun Solaris 10 inside VMware Workstation 5.5
  3. virtualization.info Virtualization Industry Roadmap
  4. virtualization.info Virtualization Industry Radar [NEW]
  5. VMware ESX Server 3.1.0 / VirtualCenter 2.1.0 features list – Updated with full details (and related: VMware Infrastructure 3.1 renamed 3.5, hits beta 2 – Updated with full details, VMware Infrastructure 3.5 and ESX Server 3i to be available since December 2007 with new prices and editions) [NEW]
  6. Microsoft publishes a license calculator for virtualization scenarios [NEW]
  7. How to improve disk I/O performances with VMware Workstation
  8. virtualization.info Rent-A-Lab [NEW]
  9. Choosing between VMware Server and ESX Server [NEW]
  10. virtualization.info Virtualization Industry Predictions [NEW]

How many forecasts from famous analyst firms really happened in 2007?

This year several things were expected:

  • 9 of 10 enterprises will have virtualization by 2007 (August 2007 prediction by Yankee Group)
    Probably false: VMware, which is the most prominent virtualization vendor at the end of 2007, reports only 20,000 enterprise customers worldwide, not even 100% of Fortune 500.
  • Automation to play a strong role in managing virtualization resources by next 18 months (January 2007 prediction by IDC)
    To be false: automation didn’t play any significant role in the 2007 and it’s unlikely the situation will suddenly change in the first half of 2008.
  • Virtualization 2.0 (continuity, DR, HA) to emerge in 2007 (December 2006 prediction by IDC)
    False: disaster recovery still is one of the most empty segments in the virtualization market. Several innovative solutions (from VMware, PlateSpin, Vizioncore and others) are in the work but they will not get any traction until next year.
  • Brazil to widely adopt virtualization in 2007 (August 2006 prediction by Gartner)
    False: Brazil didn’t appear as a key virtualization adopter on any stat during 2007. Google Trends doesn’t report the country among top 10 searcher for virtualization or other relevant keywords, and the search volume in 2007 didn’t grow much compared with 2005 and 2006.
    virtualization.info confirms such trend reporting the country at 16th position among most active sources of visits.
  • VMware to maintain 55% market share over next 12-15 months (July 2006 prediction by Yankee Group)
    True: VMware is reported to maintain a market share of around 70% in 2007.

What to expect for next year instead?