VMware, Hyper-V virtualization leave others in the dust

By Alex Barrett, News Director 23 Sep 2009 | SearchServerVirtualization.com

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For more virtualization trends: Desktop virtualization intrigues IT pros Xen vs. KVM: Verdict still out on dueling hypervisors Forget VMware support: OracleVM gets an update

The data derives from TechTarget's "Virtualization Decisions 2009 Purchasing Intentions Survey" of 666 IT professionals that have deployed or are evaluating virtualization. Data was collected between June and September 2009.

To no one's surprise, survey respondents reported using VMware Inc. over other virtualization software by a wide margin: 72.4% identified some VMware edition as their primary virtualization platform (ESX 2.x to 4.x or VMware Server), compared with 14.8% that cited a Microsoft offering (Hyper-V or Virtual Server).

VMware is the 800-pound gorilla, and everyone wants to vote for the winner. Tom Dugan, director of technical services, Recovery Networks

The reason for this is twofold, said Tom Dugan, the director of technical services at Recovery Networks, a provider of business continuity services in Philadelphia, Pa.: a crowd mentality and job-security concerns.

"VMware is the 800-pound gorilla, and everyone wants to vote for the winner," Dugan said. But also, "for a lot of people, virtualization is relatively new. If you're just dipping your toe in the water, do you start with the leader or with the vendor that has one-tenth of 1% market share?"

The window of opportunity for emergent virtualization platforms may have shut, said Andi Mann, vice president of research at Boulder, Colo.-based Enterprise Management Associates. Take Red Hat's recent move to include Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) in Red Hat 5.4. "KVM will arguably be the fifth choice in the virtualization market, behind VMware, Microsoft, Citrix and Parallels. Why would an enterprise go after KVM when they have four other options ahead of it?" Mann said.

And whereas IT managers have been relatively homogenous in their choice of virtualization platforms so far, they aren't averse to weighing other platforms going forward.

"It's good to re-evaluate every so often," wrote one survey taker.

Whereas Red Hat virtualization is almost nonexistent today, for example, 4.6% of those surveyed said they will evaluate its Xen or KVM offerings. Likewise, open source Xen and even Oracle VM deserve a mention here, coming in at 3.6% and 2.6%, respectively.

Respondents offered a variety of reasons for the decision to explore alternate virtualization platforms, such as containing costs, extending the feature set, or avoiding vendor lock-in.

Not surprisingly, potential refugees from VMware cited cost as the primary reason they'll evaluate another (55.7%), followed by the desire to extend the feature set (31%) and avoid vendor lock-in (27.6%). But survey takers exploring alternatives to Hyper-V also listed cost and lock-in as concerns (49%, and 26.5%) and also valued the idea of extending the feature set (32.7%).

But IT managers were pragmatic about bringing in a second hypervisor platform if it met a different need, such as desktop virtualization (29.3%) or solved a problem, such as support for a specific legacy operating system (13%).

For some IT professionals, the decision to go with just one virtualization platform is a matter of logistics. Jim Hutchins, the CIO at parking management vendor T2 Systems Inc. in Indianapolis, oversees an all-Microsoft shop, and had been about "pull the trigger on VMware" but opted to go with Hyper-V instead for cost reasons. But even if, hypothetically, VMware and Microsoft prices were the same price, "I'd be hard-pressed to go with VMware because it would add one more vendor to the mix," he said, including license and support contracts and maintenance procedures.

Hutchins conceded that larger companies may derive more value from playing vendors off one another. "If I were using 100 servers, it'd be a different story." But with only six servers in his shop, "they don't negotiate with me. If you're an SMB [small or medium-sized business], you get list pricing."

Let us know what you think about the story; email: Alex Barrett, News Director.

Tags: Microsoft Hyper-V and Virtual Server,  VMware virtualization,  Virtualization vendor comparisons,  Open source virtualization,  VIEW ALL TAGS

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