IDC has published their worldwide quarterly server virtualisation tracker report. You can see the news release here. Some of the main takeaways are:
- 18% of all new servers shipped in Q4’09 were virtualised, up 3% year over year
- Sales of virtualised servers declined 14% for 2009
- Virtualisation licenses declined 7% for 2009, but were up 13% in Q4 compared to Q4 of 2008.
- HP was the #1 server OEM for annual new server shipments virtualised (38%), followed by Dell (28%) and IBM (15%).
- IDC said virtualisation continues to remain a top priority
IDC didn’t publish market share for virtualisation software licenses, but rather published growth stats. VMware, Microsoft and Citrix were the only vendors called out in the news release. Some key take highlights from the report are:
- Customers are cost-conscious when choosing a server virtualisation software.
- According to IDC, Microsoft’s share of new x86 virtualisation licenses, which includes Hyper-V and Virtual Server, is now 25%. This represents an increase of 3 points year over year, the growth obviously attributed to Hyper-V and not Virtual Server
- During Microsofts Q3 earnings call [April 22], they reported that System Center server revenue grew by more than 20%. This figure represents enterprise customers adopting System Center management tools for configuring virtual machines, monitoring and backup of virtual and non-virtual applications.
- Obviously VMware still dominate this landscape with total licenses increasing 19% year over year in 4Q09. Microsoft Hyper-V continued its ascent, capturing the third highest market share by growing 215% year over year. Citrix XenServer also showed impressive year-over-year growth of 290%.