Economic crisis drives virtualisation

According to Gartner, worldwide virtualisation software revenue will increase 43% from $1.9 billion (R19 billion) in 2008 to $2.7 billion (R26.9 billion) in 2009, says Networkworld.

According to the Web site, global virtualisation penetration is on track to reach 20% in 2009 from 12% in 2008. Its adoption within IT organisations is driven by the need to reduce the total cost of ownership, enhance the agility and speed of deployment of IT needs and minimise their carbon footprint.

The virtualisation market, as defined by research firm Gartner, includes server virtualisation management, server virtualisation infrastructure and hosted virtual desktops.

The growing influence of virtualisation is causing many business leaders to think differently about their data storage infrastructure, according to a new report, states 8el.

IDC's Annual European Storage Survey notes that virtualisation is emerging as a popular alternative to traditional methods of storage, while the economic downturn continues to put pressure on company budgets.

Despite the current financial climate, the report also reveals that businesses are significantly less likely to cut spending on data storage than they are in other technology areas such as PCs, printers and servers.

LeftHand Networks, an HP company, released an entry-level storage area network (SAN) solution that improves performance and reduces storage costs in virtualised server environments for mid-size businesses, reports The Malta Independent.

The LeftHand SAS Starter SAN helps customers efficiently deploy their first virtualisation projects by simplifying the process of creating, accessing and managing shared storage resources.

As customers deploy virtual server environments, they frequently encounter unforeseen system performance bottlenecks. The LeftHand SAS Starter SAN reduces costs and mitigates these performance issues by automatically balancing data volumes across all disk drives, network connections and processors.