No Time To Lose

A boom in the adoption of server virtualization technology is both fueling and being fueled by increased channel sales and implementation of disaster-recovery solutions, according to solution providers and vendors. That trend was corroborated by an exclusive CMP Channel study on virtualization.

The study, based on a survey of solution providers conducted in November by CMP Channel, found that nearly half of solution providers expect disaster recovery to be the most important server virtualization market driver, 35 percent expect lower costs and higher economies of scale to be the key driver, and 33 percent expect increased flexibility in server resource allocation as the top market factor.

Solution providers said they expect disaster-recovery solutions will be a part of approximately 72 percent of all their server virtualization sales and implementations.

This number comes just as the adoption of server virtualization is poised to boom. Research firm IDC late last year estimated that the deployment of virtual servers will rise 40.6 percent annually through 2010, resulting in 7.9 million virtual servers implemented on top of 1.7 million physical servers by then.

Server virtualization is also one of the fastest-growing markets for solution providers, according to the CMP Channel 2008 State of the Market study. In those results, nearly 23 percent of solution providers surveyed indicated that they are already selling or recommending virtualization products of some sort, including server and/or storage virtualization.

Next: The Nuts And Bolts Of Disaster Recovery