After the Yankee Group another major analysis firm releases its forecasts for 2009: IDC.
IDC is always brave in its predictions about virtualization, but this year surpassed all expectations.
In its latest report, Worldwide System Infrastructure Software 2009 – Top 10 Predictions, the company says that The Hypervisor Market Will Be Turned Upside Down by Microsoft in 2009:
…Microsoft is working diligently on the version 2 product and will likely address the most critical shortcomings, and with the next release (targeted for 2010) should get the product to the classic Microsoft design point: that being good enough for the vast majority of the market needs.
In the interim, we can still expect that the number of footprints that Hyper-V makes (despite the product’s current maturity level) will be staggering and will turn the volume metrics of the market upside down.
These footprints are likely to penetrate all size class customers. Within the largest customers, many of which have already committed a substantial amount of their infrastructure to VMware solutions, expect use of Hyper-V to be within test, development, and noncritical and lower priority workloads at first…
Please note that IDC talks about a “hypervisor market” implying that a “virtual infrastructure market” exists as well and that may have different protagonists.
This is not the only prediction about virtualization included in the report:
- High Availability of Applications and Data Will Become a Key Driver for the Next Phase of Virtualization Software Adoption
- Standalone Virtual Server Management Tools Will Be Gobbled Up by Automated Systems Change, Configuration, and Operations Automation Platforms
- The Convergence of Software Complexity, Virtualization, and Cloud Computing Will Produce Precipitation in the Form of Software Appliances
- Hypervisors for Client Hardware Will Become Increasingly Available in 2009, Impacting Traditional Desktop Management Concepts
The virtualization.info Virtualization Industry Predictions has been updated accordingly.