According to IDC’s EMEA Quarterly Server Virtualization Tracker, 17.7 percent of all new servers shipped in EMEA in the fourth quarter of 2009 (4Q09) were virtualized, an increase from 16.31 percent in 4Q08. Actual shipments increased year over year for the first time since 4Q08, rising 2.8 percent to 110,000 physical servers.
EMEA virtualization software revenue also increased for the first time in year, recording 3.9 percent growth year on year in 4Q09 to $158 million. Virtualization licenses distributed grew year on year by 8.54 percent to 158,000. The EMEA server virtualization market continues to shift towards the use of paid hypervisors, with paid virtualization software now running on 71.7 percent of all new server hardware shipments virtualized in 4Q09 compared to the 60.7 percent recorded in 4Q08.
For the full 2009, 355,000 virtualized servers and 485,000 virtualization software licenses were shipped, representing a decline of 14.4 percent and 8.2 percent, respectively, on the previous year.
“In the fourth quarter of 2009, IDC observed a number of signs of an upturn in the server virtualization marketplace,” said Nathaniel Martinez, program director, IDC EMEA Systems and Infrastructure Solutions. “The availability of CPU upgrades and corporate mandates for their IT infrastructure to go ‘virtual’ prompted many organizations to initiate long delayed technology refreshes.”
Western Europe continues to lead the way in terms of mainstream adoption of server virtualization technology, with 20.2 percent of new servers shipped in 4Q09 virtualized compared to 19.3 percent a year ago. However, the CEMA region is rapidly bucking that trend with 11.02 percent of new servers shipped in the region virtualized compared to 8.3 percent to the same quarter a year ago.
“Virtualization adoption is accelerating in CEMA. Organizations in the region have had difficulties raising capital following the economic downturn, and so turn to virtualization to continue expanding their server infrastructure,” said Mohamed Hefny, research analyst, Systems and Infrastructure Solutions, IDC CEMA.
“Server virtualization has become the default build for new application deployments, and server refreshes among many European organizations, and this is having a profound impact on IT infrastructure directions,” said Martinez.
Hewlett-Packard held on to the number 1 spot for EMEA new server shipments virtualized, with 50 percent market share. HP’s shipments increased 12 percent year over year in 4Q09 and 23 percent sequentially. Dell remains firmly as the number 2 vendor in EMEA, with virtualized server shipments growing 33.3 percent over 3Q09. IBM remained in third position, with 15 percent market share. IBM achieved 51 percent sequential growth, driven by a solid performance from its converged System p and x86-based servers.
VMware continues to hold the number 1 spot (VMware ESX) for virtualization platforms despite revenues decreasing 1.8 percent year over year. It also saw overall virtualization license shipments decline 3 percent over the same period. Microsoft saw its virtualization license shipments increase 37.7 percent year over year overall, with Hyper-V showing strong momentum at 254 percent annual growth,18 months year after its official launch and entrenching it into fourth place. Citrix XenServer showed the largest increase, growing 355 percent year over year due to the company changing its business model and offering the product free with certain management functionalities. According to IDC it is a bold seeding strategy that will see market share gains, but will take some time to monetize if it ever does. Parallels Virtuozzo rounds out the top 5 with license shipments declining by 0.4 percent year over year. (Source: IDC/GST)