What the Experts say about virtualisation
"As the price of hardware has fallen, it has encouraged us to invest in more hardware, But the cost of managing devices is unbearable and we need something to sort it out. Virtualisation is a step towards that -- it's flexible and has an automated environment -- a primary request for a complete IT infrastructure. The challenge is in building it." – Stephen Prentice (General VP Hardware Research Gartner)
Virtualisation will be the highest-impact trend changing infrastructure and operations through 2012, and will transform how IT is managed, what is bought, how it is deployed, how companies plan and how they are charged – Gartner
4 million virtual machines expected by 2009, 611 million virtualised PCs by 2011 and the IT infrastructure and operations deeply impacted by virtualisation by 2012
Gartner - April 2008
The virtualisation Services market was going to reach a whopping $11.7 billion by 2011 – IDC
Virtualisation will be part of nearly every aspect of IT by 2015 and recommended IT managers query vendors now about how they will accommodate their application with the new technology. "Virtualisation will bring more consumer client applications into the datacenter which needs to be discussed with vendors as well," - Gartner senior analyst, Phil Sargent
"Like ToutVirtual, we see a future of heterogeneous virtualisation platforms - both bare-metal hypervisors from VMware, the Xen open source project and Microsoft, and operating-system-hosted virtualisation from Microsoft, Sun, SWsoft and VMware. IT operators and systems administrators are going to want platform-neutral, performance aware management tools to run across all these. ToutVirtual is already selling one." Rachel Chambers – The 451 Group
"Multi-function tools that can manage across a variety of environments, such as VirtualIQ, are increasingly needed by IT to monitor and control their virtualised resources. This type of software provides leverage so that IT can efficiently manage the increasing complexity of virtualised infrastructures and virtual machines." Tim Grieser – VP System Management, IDC
PC virtualisation will "increase rapidly" during the next three years, with the 5 million virtualized PCs in 2007 leaping to 660 million by the end of 2011. "As both server and PC virtualisation become more pervasive, traditional IT infrastructure orthodoxy is being challenged and is changing the way business works with IT," - Philip Dawson, vice president of Gartner
"ToutVirtual : Something New and Different in virtualisation. Design is easy to use, even for the technically-challenged. Cost is hundreds versus the thousands of dollars charged by competitors" Joe Clabby – Pund-IT Research Review
"Where the complications happen [in virtualisation] are with management, the staff impact, and the process changes that take place. There's definitely an addressable need that these guys [ToutVirtual] are trying to fill." Stephen Elliot – Director, IDC
More personal devices are being brought into the business space and this diversity - and the lack of security on such devices - is putting companies at risk.
"Technology over the next five years will allow convergence of [mobile] devices and tools, and virtualisation is one of the many enablers to allow this convergence." - Monica Basso, research director at Gartner
...until the advent of virtualisation tools for mobiles, companies should implement a set of policies to make sure there is a unified approach and clear responsibility for mobile devices in the workplace. And, as a compromise, managers should give staff a choice between a few different mobile gadgets and packages.
Virtual machine software "is moving beyond test and development and production consolidation to high availability and disaster recovery," - IDC analyst John Humphreys
