DORA EMA Virtualization Trands Forecasts Recommendations

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Virtualization and Management:Trends, Forecasts, and

Recommendations An ENTERPRISE MANAGEMENT ASSOCIATES® (EMA™) Research Report April 2008

Sponsored by:



Table of Contents

Virtualization and Management: Trends, Forecasts, and Recommendations©2008 Enterprise Management Associates, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Executive Summary ....................................................................................................................................................1

Introduction .................................................................................................................................................................3

Uncovering Virtualization ................................................................................................................................... 3

Researching Virtualization ..................................................................................................................................4

Realities of Virtualization Deployment .................................................................................................................. 5

Workloads ............................................................................................................................................................... 5

Drivers .....................................................................................................................................................................6

Satisfaction .............................................................................................................................................................7

Cost Savings ........................................................................................................................................................... 8

Addressing Specic Needs .................................................................................................................................. 8

Comparing Critical Drivers with Actual Outcomes ....................................................................................... 9

Virtualization Hype .............................................................................................................................................10

Barriers To Virtualization Success ...................................................................................................................11

Case Study – Managing Complexity with Conguresoft ECM ........................................................................13

Multiple Layers of Complexity ...............................................................................................................................14

Virtualization Platforms .....................................................................................................................................15

Virtualization Technologies ...............................................................................................................................16

Virtualization Vendors and Products ..............................................................................................................19

Server Virtualization ................................................................................................................................19

Operating System Virtualization ............................................................................................................21

Application Virtualization ........................................................................................................................22

Desktop Virtualization ............................................................................................................................23

Grid/Cluster Computing .........................................................................................................................24

Overall Vendor Penetration .....................................................................................................................25

The Virtualization Complexity Triple-Threat .....................................................................................................26

Case Study – Meeting Virtualization Audits with Tripwire Enterprise ...........................................................30

The State of Virtualization Management .............................................................................................................31

Perceptions of Virtualization Management ..................................................................................................31

Integrating Virtual and Physical Management ............................................................................................. 34

Integrating Virtualization Management with Enterprise IT Management ..............................................35Case Study – Ensuring Virtualization Performance with eG Innovations eG Monitor for VMware ..... 37

The Human Factor ...................................................................................................................................................38

The Ongoing Virtualization Skills Crisis ........................................................................................................38

Segregation of Virtualization Management Teams ......................................................................................39



Virtualization and Management: Trends, Forecasts, and Recommendations©2008 Enterprise Management Associates, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Case Study – Ensuring Virtualization Compliance with Tripwire Enterprise ...............................................42

From 2006 to 2008 – and Beyond .........................................................................................................................43

Increasing Penetration of Virtualization Technologies ...............................................................................43

A Warning about Growth for End-User Facing Virtualization Technologies ...............................45

Changing Virtualization Platforms ..................................................................................................................47

Changing Virtualization Workloads .................................................................................................................48

Changing Virtualization Drivers.......................................................................................................................50

Changing Perceptions of Virtualization Management ................................................................................51

The Growing Pain Of Virtualization Skills ................................................................................................... 54

EMA Perspective .......................................................................................................................................................55

Key Outcome – Treat Virtualization as a Strategy, not a Project ..............................................................55

Key Outcome – Prepare for Multiple Layers of Complexity ....................................................................56

Key Outcome – Adapt to the Changing Virtualization Landscape ..........................................................56

Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................................58

Appendix A: Virtualization Denitions and Taxonomy ....................................................................................59

Virtualization ........................................................................................................................................................59

Hypervisor ............................................................................................................................................................59

Hardware Virtualization .....................................................................................................................................59

Server Virtualization ...........................................................................................................................................59

Paravirtualization .................................................................................................................................................59

Operating System (OS) Virtualization ............................................................................................................60

Application Virtualization .................................................................................................................................60

Application Isolation ..........................................................................................................................................60

Software Streaming .............................................................................................................................................60

Server-Based (or Remote) Desktop Virtualization .......................................................................................60

Client-Based (or Local) Desktop Virtualization ............................................................................................ 61

Storage Virtualization .........................................................................................................................................61

Network Virtualization .....................................................................................................................................61

Data Virtualization ..............................................................................................................................................61

Clustering ..............................................................................................................................................................61Grid Computing ..................................................................................................................................................62

Software-As-A-Service (SaaS) ...........................................................................................................................62

Thin Client............................................................................................................................................................62

Appendix B: Methodology and Demographics ..................................................................................................63



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Executive Summary Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) denes virtualization as “a technique for abstracting (or hid-

ing) the physical characteristics of computing resources from the way in which other systems, applications, or end users

interact with those resources .” This includes many technologies, such as server virtualization, operating system virtualization, application virtualization, desktop virtualization, network virtualization, storage

virtualization, grid and cluster computing and more.

In 2008, EMA conducted extensive research into virtualization and the IT management implications

of all these technologies. This report outlines the important ndings of a survey of 627 respondentsinvolved with virtualization, compares the results with previous EMA research from 2006, examinesthe trends in virtualization from 2006 to 2008, forecasts the future for virtualization management in2008 and beyond, provides several case studies based on focal interviews, and provides critical recom-

mendations for enterprises and vendors to accommodate these trends.

Key ndings include:

Workloads – Virtualization deployments for all signicant workloads have increased since 2006. With79% of all respondents, test and development remains the most common use case for virtualization,

but almost three-quarters of all enterprises are now using virtualization for production applications.

Drivers – With 69% of respondents, server consolidation and improved hardware utilization is now

the strongest single driver for virtualization. As in 2006, the other leading drivers are still about serviceand performance, such as reducing downtime (62%), enabling disaster recovery and business continu-ity (60%), increasing exibility and agility (59%), and achieving SLAs (44%).

Satisfaction – Satisfaction with virtualization is lukewarm, but still positive – just 30% of enterprisesare completely satised, but 87% expressed at least some satisfaction, while less than one percentspecically expressed dissatisfaction. In several areas actual achievements are marginally below expec-

tations – probably due to over-hyped expectations.Outcomes – In 93% of enterprises, virtualization is effectively addressing multiple objectives; in 58% of

enterprises, it is achieving ve or more; and in 10% of enterprises, it is achieving 10 or 11 key objectivessimultaneously. Some marginal underachievement compared to expectations is most likely a reectionof the hype in the virtualization market, rather than any fundamental failings in the technology.

Barriers – Human issues remain the biggest barriers to virtualization, especially ‘political’ or coopera-tion issues across IT and/or business areas (43% of respondents), lack of time and/or people (40%),and lack of skills (34%). Over a third of all enterprises (35%) indicated application support was still a

critical barrier.

Platforms, Technologies, Vendors – with 89% of all deployments, Microsoft Windows is the most

popular virtualization platform, but with 67% Linux is not far behind. Server virtualization is the mostpopular technology, with 80% of deployments, but Operating System virtualization is also popular with71%. VMware is the leading vendor, with current or planned deployments in 89% of all respondents,but it is under a more serious threat than ever before with Microsoft hot on its heels at 81%, and Citrix

well within reach at 60%. Microsoft Hyper-V will be a serious challenger in the server virtualizationspace – although it is still only beta, already 32% of respondents are planning to deploy it. Similarly,



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Citrix XenDesktop will be a strong challenger in the desktop virtualization space – it is also still in beta,yet 18% of respondents are already planning to deploy it.

Multiple Layers of Complexity – 79% of enterprises are deploying virtualization in a heterogeneousmix of platforms (Windows, Linux, UNIX, etc.). Over 90% are using a mix of virtualization tech-nologies (server, OS, storage, etc). Over 90% of all enterprises have multiple virtualization vendors

(VMware, Microsoft, Citrix, etc.); 50% have four or more. On average, each enterprise has 11 differentplatforms, technologies and vendors to deal with in their virtualization environment alone. Only 2%have just one of each; almost 20% are dealing with 15 or more.

Ease of Management – A majority of enterprises rate all management disciplines as either easier or thesame in a virtual environment. Of the minority, security is rated by more enterprises as being harder

under virtualization, followed by problem and incident management, capacity management, and con-guration management. However, every management discipline is rated harder in 2008 than it was in2006 as more enterprises realize the difculties of virtualization management.

Management Tools – Almost 10% of all enterprises are using no virtualization management toolsat all. 29% use the tools that came bundled with their virtualization technologies, and 20% use addi-tional tools from their virtualization vendors. 10% use third-party tools designed for managing virtual

environments, but only 14% use management technologies designed for both virtual and physicalenvironments.

Managing Multiple Layers of Complexity – Only 19% of enterprises have management tools that canmanage all of the virtualization platforms in use in these enterprises; only 22% can manage all of the virtualization technologies; and only 26% can manage all the virtualization vendors. Virtualizationmanagement tools do not tend to integrate with the rest of the IT management stack, or align IT

services with business objectives.

Skills Issues – Only 31% of all enterprises stated that they denitely have the right skills to manage their

virtual systems. 20% of enterprises that have already implemented virtualization said specically thatthey do not have appropriate skills. The availability of virtualization skills has become worse since2006, when 43% stated that they denitely had the right skills. Skills shortage will continue to be a majorproblem for enterprises deploying virtualization.

Penetration - penetration of virtualization within enterprises has grown from 2006 to 2008 across all virtualization technologies by 26% – exactly as EMA predicted in 2006. Server virtualization has grown

by 20% and OS virtualization by 21% – again matching EMA’s 2006 predictions. Storage virtualizationand le system virtualization grew as predicted at over 30% – specically, at 36% and 37% respectively.Desktop and application virtualization both grew marginally more slowly than predicted, at 20% and

18% respectively.

Expanding Deployments – Based on current enterprise planning, EMA estimates an increase in the

virtualization market of around 20% p.a. across all virtualization technologies. However, physicaldeployment will continue to be the dominant paradigm at least through 2010. EMA believes desktopand application virtualization in particular will grow less than even enterprises expect – just as they didfrom 2006-2008 – due to difculties exposing end users to virtualization technologies.



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IntroductionUncovering Virtualization

EMA denes virtualization as:“a technique for abstracting (or hiding) the physical characteristics of computing resources from the way in which

other systems, applications, or end users interact with those resources”

This includes making a single physical resource (such as a server, an operating system, an application,

or storage device) appear to function as multiple logical resources; or it can include making multiplephysical resources (such as storage devices or servers) appear as a single logical resource.

The most explored virtualization technology is Server Virtualization – a method of running multipleguest operating environments directly on top of base hardware, sharing ne-grained resources (CPU,memory, etc,), without requiring a complete host operating system. However, virtualization takes many different forms, including, for example:

Operating System Virtualization – running multiple logical (or virtual) operating systems (or“guests”) on top of a fully functioning base (or “host”) operating system

Application Virtualization – providing an individual application to an end user without needing to completely install this application on the user’s local system

Desktop Virtualization – providing a complete compute environment (with an independent OS,applications, data, etc.) to an end user, independent of their physical desktop

Storage Virtualization – providing access to data storage without needing to dene to systems

and applications where the storage is physically located or managed

Network Virtualization – abstracting ne-grained network services, resources, or componentsfrom the systems, applications, and network subsystems that utilize or communicate with those

components This is far from a complete list. Streaming, isolation, grid and cluster computing, and more are all virtualization technologies. Even other abstracting technologies like software-as-a-service (SaaS) and

service oriented architectures (SOAs) could be considered forms of virtualization. For a complete tax-onomy of virtualization, including denitions of all these technologies, please refer to Appendix A.

This research looks across the entire range of virtualization technologies, platforms, vendors, drivers,use cases, outcomes, and more – with a particular focus on managing virtual environments – to give themost complete understanding to date of the most important virtualization and management trends,forecasts, and recommendations.

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Researching VirtualizationIn February 2008, EMA conducted primary research (including an extensive survey, one-on-one focalinterviews, and several case studies) into the primary use cases, drivers, outcomes, satisfaction ratings,

barriers, platforms, technologies, vendors, penetration levels, management disciplines, managementsoftware, management processes, and various human issues, across the entire virtualization landscape.

A qualied set of over 35,000 IT professionals from around the world were invited to participate ina Web-based survey crafted independently by EMA’s expert analysts. All respondents self-identiedas being active participants in their virtualization environment, and as having a current or immediate virtualization deployment. In all, around 90% of respondents had already implemented virtualization,

and 60% had virtualization technologies implemented for more than 12 months.

This survey netted 627 responses, primarily from decision makers and technical evaluators in IT infra-

structure planning, Data Center operations, and IT architecture. Companies represented include allsizes, from small and medium businesses to large and very large enterprises, across multiple differentindustries and from all major geographies. A complete description of the survey methodology anddemographics can be found in Appendix B: Methodology and Demographics.

This EMA Research Report analyses this primary data, and provides expert insight and analysis into virtualization and management trends, forecasts, and recommendations.



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Realities of Virtualization Deployment Workloads

EMA started by asking respondents to categorize the workloads they are running in their virtualizationdeployments.

W hat types of IT workloads have you dep loyed virtualization technology for?

1%

41 %

45 %

47 %

47 %

50 %

51 %

54 %

74 %

79 %

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90%

Other

Product ion Middleware System s

End-User Desktops

Data/Storage Management System s

Product ion Web Servers

Product ion Database Servers

Disaster Recovery Systems

End-User Applications

Production Application Servers

Test and Development

With 79% of all respondents, test and development remains the most common use case for virtualization.EMA recommends this as an ideal starting point for virtualization because it delivers signicant results,yet is isolated from the day-to-day business for end users, making it both safe and effective. Similarly,

using virtualization for disaster recovery workloads (as 51% of respondents are doing) is a high-returnuse case that has a very low potential for negative impact on end users or external customers.

Almost three-quarters (74%) of all enterprises are now using virtualization for production applications,

making it the second most prevalent use case. This alone is enough to indicate that virtualization is aprime-time technology, no longer relegated just to test systems, DR, or back-ofce systems like leor DHCP servers. Especially alongside production Web servers (47%), production database servers

(50%), and even production middleware systems (41%), this continues to reinforce the conclusion (rstnoted by EMA in 2006) that a signicant volume of virtualizationis deployed for three-tier production workloads. Focal interviews with virtualization users (such as in the case studies in this report,

in other EMA publications, and in unpublished discussions) reveal

virtualization is used for many mission-critical workloads, likemobile banking, e-mail servers, ERP systems, CRM applications

and more.

The rise of desktop and application virtualization, and the growthof server and OS virtualization for production applications, con-

Almost three-quarters (74%)o all enterprises are now using virtualization or

production applications,making it the second

most prevalent use case



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tribute to the 54% of enterprises that are deploying virtualization for end-user application workloads,and the 45% that are using it for end-user desktop workloads.

Virtualization is also in use by 50% of enterprises for production database servers. Historically, along-side other I/O and resource intensive systems (e.g., e-mail servers), enterprises have appeared reluctantto virtualize these workloads outside of test and development. Clearly, that is no longer the case.

Drivers

Please rate the importance o f each of the fol lowing dr ivers

in your decision to implement virtualization

37 %

38 %

41 %

44 %

53 %

59 %

60 %

62 %

62 %

69 %

53 %

43 %

49 %

48 %

43 %

36 %

37 %

35 %

33 %

30 %

11 %

19 %

10 %

8%

4%

4%

4%

3%

5%

1%

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

Reduce sof tware costs

Regain/rationalize floor space

Improve securi ty and control

Meet SLAs

Lower admin/mgmt costs

Increased flexibility/agility

Enable DR/BCP

Reduce hardware costs

Reduce downt ime

Server cons olidation/uti l ization

C ritical S om ew hat im portant Not S o Im portant

Cited as critical by 69% of respondents, server consolidation and improved hardware utilization – aparticular strength of server and OS virtualization – is now the strongest single driver for virtualization. As a result, 62% are specically looking to reduce their hardware costs, and 38% expect to regain or

rationalize their oor space requirements. Other direct cost savings tend to rate much lower – lowering administration and management costs is critical to 53% of respondents, but reducing software costs isthe least important of all listed options, regarded as a critical driver

by only 37% of respondents.

The other leading drivers are substantially about service and per-

formance. Reducing downtime is the second highest driver, rated

as critical by 62% of respondents. This is likely due to virtualizationfeatures and capabilities such as high availability, live migration,hardware independence, and more. Similarly, enabling better (faster,

more effective) disaster recovery and business continuity outcomes was rated as critical by 60% of respondents, and 44% consideredensuring better achievement of SLAs to be a critical driver. In addi-

Cited as critical by 69%o respondents, server

consolidation and improved hardware utilization is now the strongest single driver or virtualization



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tion, 59% were looking at increased exibility and agility – such as faster provisioning – to be a criticaldriver, further reinforcing the overall goal of improving IT performance for end users.

SatisfactionOverall, how satisfied are you with your Virtualization solutions?

0% 1%

12 %

57 %

30 %Completely Dissatisfied

Somew hat Dissat is f ied

Neither Satisfied nor Dissatisfied

Somew hat Sat is f ied

Completely Satisfied

Enterprise satisfaction with virtualization is lukewarm, but mostly positive. Just 30% are completely satised with their virtualization deployment, while more than half (57%) are merely somewhat satis-ed, and a further 12% were neither satised nor dissatised. In a two-factor analysis, 87% of all enter-prises expressed satisfaction with virtualization, and less than one

percent specically expressed dissatisfaction. Clearly, virtualizationdelivers more than it disappoints. However, with 70% still express-ing something other than complete satisfaction, this does point to

some difculties, or some underachieved expectations.

In a two-actor analysis,87% o all enterprises expressed satisaction

with virtualization, and less than one percent specically expressed

dissatisaction. Clearly,virtualization delivers

more than it disappoints.



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Cost Savings

Overall, has your virtualization deployment resulted in real, measurable cost savings?

8%

21 %

71 %

Ye s

No

Don’t know

One expectation that virtualization clearly delivers on is cost reduction – 71% of all enterprises haveachieved real and measurable cost savings from their virtualization deployment. Only 8% have not.

Virtualization can certainly save signicant costs in hardware, software, power, management, and more,so it is very positive to see a vast majority of organizations reaping these rewards.

Addressing Specific Needs

W hich of the fol lowing need s are effectively being addressed

by your cu rrent implementation of virtualization solutions?

0%

31 %

33 %

34 %

35 %

48 %

50 %

51 %

53 %

59 %

69 %

73 %

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80%

Other

Improve security and control

Faster problem resolution


Meet SLAs



Enable DR/BCP

Reduce downt ime




At a more granular level, virtualization is delivering many valuable outcomes. The single most impor-tant driver for virtualization – server consolidation and improved utilization – is certainly being met,and even overachieved. While 69% of enterprises consider this a critical driver, 73% are nding this to

be a successful outcome. Similarly, where 62% of enterprises see reducing hardware costs as a criticaldriver, 69% say virtualization is effectively delivering that outcome.



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Virtualization also delivers tangible cost savings beyond just hardware cost reduction – 34% of respondents report that virtualizationalso effectively reduces their software costs, and for exactly half of

all respondents it leads directly to lower costs for administrationand management.

Almost 60% are nding that virtualization delivers on their needsfor improved exibility and agility, such as with faster provision-ing. The abilities of virtualization to deliver a dynamic and respon-

sive enterprise, with IT able to provision servers and applicationsrapidly to respond to business needs, is a clear and impressiveoutcome from virtualization.

Similarly, the ability of virtualization to deliver a highly available, highly responsive business environ-ment based on a reliable fault tolerant IT infrastructure is also remarkable. 53% of respondents ndthat virtualization directly reduces downtime, 51% nd that it improves their disaster recovery and

business continuity processes, 35% nd that it helps them meet or exceed their service level agree-ments, and 33% nd that virtualization enables them to resolve problems faster.

Comparing Critical Drivers with Actual Outcomes

Variance Betw een Cr itical Drivers and Effective Outcomes for Virtualization

-10%

-9 %

-9 %

-9 %

-3 %

-3 %

0%

4%

7%

10 %

-15% -10% -5% 0% 5% 10% 15%

Improve securi ty and control

Meet SLAs

Enable DR/BCP

Reduce downt ime




Server c onsolidation/uti lization



Underachieveing Expectat ions | Ove rachieve ing Expectat ions

Unfortunately, the level of achievement for several outcomes – while undeniably positive – under-

achieves on critical expectations, albeit marginally. The variance between the percentage of respon-dents nominating particular issues as critical drivers for deploying virtualization, and the percentagenominating those same issues as effectively being addressed by virtualization, is mostly negative. Inareas like improving service to end users – meeting SLAs, improving continuity, reducing downtime

Te single most important

driver or virtualization– server consolidation

and improved utilization– is certainly being met,and even overachieved.



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– and in security and control, virtualization is not delivering on critical needs as often as enterprises are expecting.

The variance is not overwhelming – within 10% on bothsides – but it is clearly disappointing for many enterprises.

This is not to say that virtualization is failing to deliver effec-tive outcomes. Only three respondents (a statistically insig-nicant number) reported that virtualization had not effec-

tively achieved any of the suggested outcomes. By contrast,in 93% of enterprises virtualization is effectively addressing multiple objectives; in 58% of enterprises it is achieving ve

or more; and in 10% of enterprises it is achieving 10 or 11key objectives simultaneously.

Virtualization Hype

Any marginal underachievement is most likely a reection of the hype in the virtualization market,rather than any fundamental failings in the technology. As a (very) rough measure of this hype, anInternet search on “virtualization” at the time of writing 1 reveals around 53,000 news articles for all

periods going back to 1997. Of these, approximately half appeared in just the last 18 months, and inrandom samples, media coverage of virtualization appears to be mostly positive.

VMware Share Price - Aug 2007 to Mar 2008

$0.00

$20.00

$40.00

$60.00

$80.00

$100.00

$120.00

$140.00

Aug-07 S ep-07 O c t-07 Nov-07 D ec-07 Jan-08 Feb-08 Mar-08

Date

S h a r e P r i c e

This hype is also exemplied by the roller coaster ride of market leader VMware (NYSE:VMW). Itsshare price went from a post-IPO price of $57 in August 2007, to a high of $124, before sliding back to below the IPO price at the time of writing 2. Comparing its extraordinary price-to-earnings (P/E)

1: See http://news.google.com/archivesearch?q=virtualization for a current view.2: See http://nance.google.com/nance?&q=VM W for a current valuation.

In 93% o enterprises virtualization is eectively

addressing multiple objectives; in 58% o enterprises it is achieving ve or more; and in 10% o enterprises it is achieving 10 or 11 key objectives simultaneously.

http://news.google.com/archivesearch?q=virtualization

http://finance.google.com/finance?&q=VMW




http://news.google.com/archivesearch?q=virtualization



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ratio of over 75 with IT stalwarts like Google (P/E: 32), Microsoft (P/E: 16), IBM (P/E: 16), and itsparent company EMC (P/E: 19), this indicates that clearly there is a lot of hype in the virtualizationmarket. VMware dominates the virtualization market in sev-

eral important categories, but its share price appears drivenby inated expectations more than actual earnings.

This hype has tended to overexcite enterprise expectations. There is little doubt that virtualization is delivering signi-cant value – both measurable and intangible – to the major-

ity of enterprises that are deploying it. However, enterprisesneed to curb their enthusiasm, and approach virtualization with marginally more modest expectations, and with a well-informed, broad-reaching strategy that aims to achieve mul-

tiple objectives.

Barriers To Virtualization SuccessW hat are the greatest barriers that your organization has/had to overcome w hen

implementing or expanding your virtualization deployment?

3%

16 %

16 %

20 %

30 %

34 %

35 %

40 %

43 %

0 % 5 % 10 % 1 5% 2 0 % 25 % 3 0% 3 5 % 4 0 % 45 % 5 0%

Oth e r

Prov ing aud i t compl iance

Solutions lacking functionality

Difficulty identifying use case(s)

High cost of available solutions

Insufficient virtualization skills

App l ica t ions are un supported

Lack o f t ime and/or peop le

Internal ‘political’ issues

Originally highlighted in EMA 2006 virtualization research, human and political issues remain thebiggest barriers to virtualization. The most signicant barrier to virtualization deployment is internal

‘political’ or cooperation issues across IT and/or business areas, cited by 43% of respondents. Lack of time and/or people is a major issue for 40% of enterprises, and a lack of appropriate virtualization

skills was a major concern for 34% of enterprises. For more detailed analysis of these human issues,see The Human Factor below.

Enterprises need to curbtheir enthusiasm, and

approach virtualization withmarginally more modest expectations, and with

a well-inormed, broad-reaching strategy that aims toachieve multiple objectives.



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The third highest barrier to implementation is a very disappointing reection on application vendorsand developers. Over a third of all enterprises (35%) indicated that lack of support for their applica-tions is among their greatest barriers to virtualization deployment. In 2006 this was a signicant issue,

which many application vendors have still not addressed. If they continue to ignore the vast wave of virtualization, application vendors will be left behind, and rightly so. At this stage, and in light of thesignicant cost-benet of virtualization, enterprises should strongly consider dropping any vendor

that does not support its applications in a virtual environment.

Surprisingly, the high cost of solutions – to buy and to implement

– was cited by 30% of enterprises as among their greatest barriers. This bodes well for the future of high quality, free open sourceoptions like Xen and OpenVZ, free proprietary offerings likeMicrosoft Virtual Server and Virtual PC, and relatively inexpensive

open source bundles from Citrix or Virtual Iron. However, thereare few free or low-cost solutions for desktop, application, storage,

or network virtualization, for example, and implementation willalways incur some costs.

With the many signicant workloads and positive outcomes out-lined above for virtualization, it is surprising to see that 20% of

enterprises actually see a substantial difculty identifying or den-ing appropriate use case(s) for virtualization. Also surprising isthat, separate from cost, 16% are unable to nd available virtualization solutions with the functionality

to do what they need. Also given the difculties in security administration, management, and control,it is surprising that only 16% of enterprises cited audit and compliance concerns as a signicant bar-rier. EMA expects this concern to rise as the market understands more completely the complexity of virtualization security.

Unfortunately, 69% of enterprises responded that more than one issue was their greatest barrier,and 41% needed to overcome three or more. Virtualization is clearly not always an easy strategy to

implement or expand. On a positive note, a signicant number – 30% – only selected a single issueas the greatest barrier to overcome, and only 5% – a barely statistically signicant percentage – citedve or more.

At this stage, and in light o the signicant cost-

benet o virtualization,enterprises should strongly

consider dropping any vendor that does not

support its applications ina virtual environment.



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Case Study – Managing Complexity withConfiguresoft ECMLarry is Assistant Vice President of Windows Server Operations for a leading North Americannance company with over a million customers and more than $10 billion in loan assets. Their

IT organization of around 170 people supports a large partitioned iSeries (AS/400) system, 40IBM AIX servers, and 340 physical and virtual Windows Servers. The company started using virtualization in 2002, and today has 14 VMware ESX hosts running 160 virtual Windows guests

– accounting for around 95% of development, 75% of QA, 40% of DR, and 25% of their pro-duction systems.

However, they faced a growing problem managing virtual and physical system congurations. Their existing audit and reporting tool, says Larry, was simply “not working very well. I hadno way to x problems, and not even an easy way to report on them,” especially in the virtualenvironment. “With [VMware’s] VirtualCenter, we had to dive deeply into each server and do

manual comparisons. That’s alright for one or two systems, but once you get 14 or more, you needa unied view.”

Larry needed “to view conguration settings across all systems at once, with a single view” – not just virtual systems, but also their physical infrastructure including Windows, AIX, ActiveDirectory, Microsoft Exchange, and SQL-Server. He also needed to perform remediation, not justreporting. “There is a big difference between being able to report a problem and being able to x

it,” says Larry. “Really being able to x problems is a big thing for me.”

After rejecting several alternatives that did not satisfy his requirements, Larry chose Conguresoft

ECM to solve the conguration management problems in his diverse physical and virtual environ-ment. The results have been remarkable.

“Now I can see virtual host and guest congurations across the board,” says Larry, including “miscongured NICs, miscongured settings – all these things that would take an hour to under-stand, now I can have a report in minutes.” As a result, they “have eliminated over 6000 deviationsfrom our standards in 3 months. If I had to do that manually, I could see that as a 2-3 year project.

It has paid for itself in just 3 months.”

It has also delivered productivity and stafng improvements. “We wrote script after script just to

manage the environment,” says Larry. “Now we can eliminate them all. I don’t have to worry aboutmaintaining them, or keeping a scripter on staff.” It has also helped Larry to achieve much betteraudit compliance, because they are now “much better at nding changes that are not appropriate.

I don’t think (the auditors) are going to nd any problems this time.”

For business users, all they see is available systems. “They don’t need to know about the technol-

ogy,” says Larry, “but by reduced downtime from us xing and preventing bad changes, andprotecting against potential intrusion, they will experience less downtime.”

With cost savings, improved productivity, better audit compliance, and higher availability,Conguresoft ECM has clearly delivered signicant benets in this complex physical and virtualinfrastructure.



Page


Multiple Layers of Complexity Enterprises deploying virtualization are facing a major management problem – the multiple layers of

complexity that inevitably lead to a complex, disjointed, heterogeneous environment. These multiplelayers of complexity include:

Multiple business and IT drivers

Multiple outcomes

Many different barriers

Multiple management teams

Multiple management disciplines

Multiple management tools

Etc.

Moreover, as this research shows, by far the majority of enterprises also need to deal with a physicalenvironment, typically also consisting of multiple platforms, technologies, and vendors. Virtualizationlayers all of its complexity not as a replacement for, but directly on top of, the existing complexity of

a physical IT environment.

However, EMA believes that the three most important layers of complexity, which raise the biggest

management issues, are:

Multiple virtualization platforms

Multiple virtualization technologies

Multiple virtualization vendors

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•





Page


Virtualization Technologies The sample set in this research consisted of enterprises that have or immediately plan to deploy virtualization; it was therefore not suitable to determine overall market penetration of each virtualization

technology. However, it was perfect for determining the relative penetration of each virtualization tech-nology within the average enterprise. EMA asked enterprises to quantify the penetration level in theirenvironment for each of the various virtualization technologies – ‘none’, ‘few’, ‘some’, ‘half ’, ‘most’,or ‘all’.

Percentage of respondents reporting at least some of

their environment is using the fol lowing technologies

43 %

46 %

54 %

59 %

60 %

67 %

71 %

80 %

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90%

Streaming

Desktop

Network

Application

File System

Storage

O S

Server

Among these enterprises with imminent or current virtualization

deployments, server virtualization is the most popular technology, with 80% having deployed it in at least some of their environment.Operating System virtualization is also widely deployed, with 71%reporting at least some of this technology in their environment.

Storage virtualization is also very strong, and is deployed in atleast some of the environment by 67% of these enterprises. Filesystem virtualization takes fourth spot, with 60% of enterprises. Application virtualization comes in fth with 59%.

Among enterprises withimminent or current

virtualization deployments,server virtualization is the most popular technology,

with 80% having deployed it in at least some o

their environment.



Page


H o w m u c h o f y o u r e n v i ro n m e n t i s u s in g t h e

following virtualizat ion technologies?

6%

5%

5%

3%

4%

5%

4%

5%

22 %

19 %

16 %

11 %

13 %

24 %

16 %

14 %

20 %

12 %

9%

9%

6%

13 %

10 %

12 %

31 %

35 %

29 %

20 %

24 %

25 %

24 %

30 %

13 %

19 %

20 %

20 %

29 %

18 %

22 %

21 %

7%

10 %

21 %

37 %

25 %

16 %

24 %

18 %

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

Server

O S

Application

Streaming

Desktop

Storage

Network

File System

% or total respondents

All Mos t Half S om e Few None

Breaking this down in a more granular fashion gives a much moreaccurate, if somewhat more difcult description of virtualizationtechnology deployments. In this measure, storage virtualization

is deployed in most of the environment for 29% of enterprises,followed by server virtualization (28%), OS virtualization (24%),and application virtualization (21%). Streaming is consistently low in all penetration levels. Very few enterprises have deployed any

virtualization technology in their entire environment – even server

virtualization is deployed across the entire environment for only 6% of enterprises.

Very ew enterprises have deployed any virtualizationtechnology in their entire environment – even server

virtualization is deployed across the entire environment or only 6% o enterprises.



Page 8


W hich of the fol lowing virtual networ k technologies if any, are you uti l izing?

0%

19 %

31 %

49 %

55 %

72 %

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80%

Other

MAC Address Change

Lockdown

Virtual firewalling

NIC teaming

NA T

Virtual LANs (VLANs)

While network virtualization is covered in more detail by EMA in other reports, network virtualization

is in some ways more complex, with more varied technologies, than other types of system virtualization.It is therefore interesting to look specically at the different types of network virtualization technology that are in use in the enterprise. Virtual Local Area Networks (VLANs) are clearly most prominent, inuse at 72% of enterprises. Network Address Translation (NAT) is second most popular, deployed in

55% of enterprises, narrowly more popular than Network Interface Card (NIC) teaming at 49%. Lesspopular are virtual rewalls (31%) and locking down MAC address changes (19%). Look for morein-depth coverage of network virtualization in forthcoming EMA research reports



Page


Virtualization Vendors and Products

Server Virtualization

W hich of the following Server Virtualization products,

if any, do you have or are you planning to implement?

0%

8%

10 %

11 %11 %

12 %

13 %

13 %

14 %

16 %

21 %

32 %

82 %

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90%

Other

Virtual Iron

VS E

Oracle VM

Linux KVM

IB M P O W E R

IBM zSeries

Sun xVM

HP nPar/vPar/Integrity

Open Source Xen

Citrix XenServer

Microsoft Hyper-V

VMware ESX/Server

In the server virtualization space, it is little surprise to see VMware dominating the market. Over 80%of enterprises that are implementing, or have already implemented virtualization, are doing so with VMware’s server virtualization products. With mature technology, strong additional capabilities for

disaster recovery and high availability, and a signicant head start on its many competitors, VMware

ESX and VMware Server are very popular products, for very good reason.More surprising is the 32% of all enterprises that nominatedMicrosoft Hyper-V, despite it being available only as a beta ver-sion at the time of this research. Hyper-V still some months away

from general availability, yet it is already the second most preferredserver virtualization product. This bodes very well for Microsoft – and very badly for VMware. If this take-up is any indication,Microsoft will indeed storm onto the server virtualization front

in the coming 12-24 months. This is no doubt substantially due tothe dominance of the Windows Server platform – as enterprisesupgrade from earlier versions of Windows Server, the ability to

deploy an integrated, out-of-the-box, server virtualization plat-form at a much lower unit cost, is going to be both easy and popular. Microsoft also provides a broadecosystem of virtualization technologies (including server, OS, application, and desktop virtualization)and management technologies (in particular the integrated Systems Center suite for conguration, pro-

visioning, virtual machine management, and more), further easing the burden of choice, particularly in more homogeneous Microsoft-based environments. In any case, there is no doubt that erstwhile

Microsot Hyper-V is still some months away rom general availability, yet it is already the second most preerred server

virtualization product.



Page 20


market leader VMware will need some outstanding innovation, and both organic and inorganic growth,if it wants to try to maintain its current dominance.

A number of open source Xen implementations are scattered through the results. These generally takethe basic Xen hypervisor, and add management capabilities and services. Of these, Citrix XenServer(the result of the September 2007 acquisition by Citrix of XenSource3 ) takes the lead, with 21% of

all respondents – a very healthy number given the relative maturity of the Xen platform. Open sourceXen (i.e. the basic implementation of the Xen hypervisor included in open source Linux distributions) was much higher than might be expected at 16%. Other Xen-based products, which tend to be aimed

at specic sub-markets (e.g., Solaris users, Oracle Db users, SMBs, etc.), include Sun xVM (13%),Oracle VM (11%), and Virtual Iron (8%). With many enterprises choosing to implement basic opensource Xen, this raises serious questions about the viability of those vendors’ open-proprietary mix.

Adjusting for individual enterprises that are deploying multiple variants, 44% of all enterprises have or are deploying Xen insome fashion – signicantly above Microsoft, but still a distant

second. Linux KVM accounts for an additional 11%, which startsto put open source server virtualization within striking range of VMware’s lead.

Among the other (essentially non-x86) virtualization products,HP’s virtualization platforms (nPars, vPars, and Integrity), with amaturity, scalability, and reliability that is typically much greater

than any standard x86 implementations, leads with around 14%of all deployments. (HP also rates 10% with its proprietary VSEoperating environment). IBM’s workhorse zSeries (including z/

OS and z/Linux, as well as early versions of z/Solaris) comes innext, at 13%. IBM pSeries (POWER) UNIX virtualization rates a

further 12% of all enterprises

(Of course, evaluating and comparing markets and penetration for x86 and non-x86 products is a dif-cult task at best. Virtualization on an HP-UX, i5/OS, or especially zSeries, is a far different capability than on x86. The sheer scale of compute power on such systems makes them completely different

from x86 products, and for the most part from each other, so they are almost impossible to comparein any reasonable way.)

3: For more information and a detailed analysis of the acquisition of XenSource by Citrix, see the EMA Impact Brief, Citrix Acquires

XenSource , http://www.enterprisemanagement.com/research/ema_product.php?product=4000_1424

Adjusting or individual enterprises that are deploying multiple variants, 44%o all enterprises have or

are deploying Xen in some ashion – signicantly

above Microsot’s (yet to be released) Hyper-V, but still a distant second to VMware.

http://www.enterprisemanagement.com/research/ema_product.php?product=4000_1424




Page 2


Operating System Virtualization

W hich of the fol lowing Operating System (OS) V irtualization prod ucts,

if any do you have or are you planning to implement?

0%

6%

7%

9%

15 %

17 %

48 %

69 %

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80%

Other

Linux Jails

Open Source OpenVZ

HP Sec ure Resource Part i tions

Parallels Virtuozz o, W orkstation

Sun Solar is C ontainers

Microsoft Virtual PC, Virtual

Server

VMware ACE, Fus ion, or

W orkstat ion

VMware is also a clear leader in the OS virtualization market, with 69% of all enterprises with virtualization deploying its products (VMware ACE, VMware Fusion, or VMware Workstation).

However, it is nowhere near as dominant in OS virtualization as it is in server virtualization. Microsoft(with its free Virtual PC and Virtual Server products) comes a relatively close second with 48% of enterprises. The third-highest penetration for OS virtualization is Sun’s Solaris Containers, which comes

with Solaris at no additional cost. At 17% of all enterprises, it is the highest ranked OS virtualizationsolution to run on a standard UNIX environment, ahead of HP’s Secure Resource Partitions. Parallels(formerly SWsoft) Virtuozzo comes in with 15% of enterprises, with another free option, the opensource OpenVZ (upon which the Parallels Virtuozzo solution is built), being deployed or planned in

7% of enterprises. Another free OS virtualization option, Linux Jails, comes in at the bottom with just 6%.

What is perhaps most surprising about these results is that OS virtualization – of any brand – is as widely deployed as it is. Itis often disparaged in comparison to server virtualization, andconsidered (for no real reason) to be a lesser option that is not as

robust, or not suited for server workloads. Indeed, the need to run

a host OS can add to the base load put on the hardware, decreas-ing the number or combined workload of the guest virtual serv-

ers that can be loaded onto each single physical system. However,it can also have many advantages over server virtualization. The Jails/Containers approach, for example, actually virtualizes fewerresources, so more of the common processing requirement is

shared, rather than being duplicated as it is in a server virtualization

VMware is also a clear leader in the OS virtualization

market, with 69% o all enterprises with

virtualization deploying its products. However, it is nowhere near as dominant in OS virtualization as it is in server virtualization.



Page 22


deployment. For some workloads, this means that OS virtualization can actually load up more work-loads onto a single physical system. It is also easier for most people to install OS virtualization ontoan existing platform for more casual use cases (as opposed to formal server migration projects), and

especially on individual desktops, than server virtualization. This is especially true in a test/dev lab, where OS virtualization can enable even more rapid build-test-rebuild cycles than a more technology-heavy server virtualization approach. Finally, it is widely available at no unit cost. In focal interviews

with enterprise users, EMA has found that even when considering the additional cost of a proprietary host OS, free OS virtualization can result in annual cost savings in the realm of $20K in a small deploy-ment (5 servers), and up to $300K in a larger deployment (100 servers), compared to a proprietary server virtualization solution.

Application Virtualization

W hich of the following Application Virtualization products,


1%

3%

7%

15 %

31 %

36 %

45 %

0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% 45% 50%

Other

Endeavors

AppStream

Sym antec (Al t ir is) SVS

Microsoft SoftGrid

VMware Thinstall

C i t r ix XenApp (CP S)

Citrix XenApp (formerly Citrix Presentation Services) is the clearleader in application virtualization with a planned or currentdeployment in 45% of enterprises. With a relatively long history,

a mature technology, and a strong management ecosystem, Citrixhas long been and continues to be the deserved market leader.

However, VMware, with its 2007 acquisition of application virtualization/isolation vendor Thinstall4, has already jumped intosecond place with 36% of all enterprises. This is a phenomenaltake-up – similar to the extraordinary leap of Microsoft Hyper-V

in the server virtualization space. This surpasses rival Microsoft whose SoftGrid product (acquired by Microsoft in 20065 ), gar-

4: For more information and a detailed analysis of the VMware acquisition of Thinstall, see EMA Impact Brief, VMware Announces

Acquisition of Thinstall - http://www.enterprisemanagement.com/research/ema_product.php?product=4000_1530 5: For more information and a detailed analysis of the Microsoft acquisition of Softricity, see EMA Impact Brief, Microsoft Acquires Softricity,

Outlines Virtualization Vision - http://www.enterprisemanagement.com/research/ema_product.php?product=4000_1132

Citrix XenApp (ormerly Citrix Presentation Services)

is the clear leader inapplication virtualization

with a planned or current deployment in

45% o enterprises.







Page 2


nered a respectable, but trailing, 31% of all enterprises. Altiris SVS (part of Symantec since early 20076 )comes in substantially below any of the three leading products with only 15% of enterprises.

Leading the niche vendors is AppStream7 with 7% – although this does not account for implementa-tions as part of OEM solutions such as (among others) Altiris, just as VMware’s Thinstall is OEM’dto Altiris rival, LANDesk. Endeavors (formerly Stream Theory) rounds out the main application

virtualization vendors with 3% of surveyed enterprises using or planning to deploy their product.

Desktop Virtualization

W hich of the fol lowing Desktop Virtualization products,


1%

3%

4%

10 %

18 %

42 %

55 %

58 %

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70%

Other

SIMtone (XDS )

Microsoft Kidaro Desktop

Quest Provis ion Networks

Citrix XenDesktop

Ci tr ix XenApp (CPS )

Microsoft Terminal Services

VMware VDI

Taken as a single vendor, Citrix leads this category with 60% of all respondents having deployed or planning a Citrix desktop

virtualization implementation, including XenApp (42%), andXenDesktop (18%). Microsoft is second with 59% of respon-dents, including those selecting Terminal Services (55%) and

Kidaro (4%), which Microsoft acquired in early 20088. VMwareis a very close third with 58%. All three are separated by less thanthe margin of error for this research, making this the tightest virtualization market by far. EMA expects this to continue to be

the most tightly contested market in virtualization through thenext 12-24 months.

Rounding out this technology with 10% is relative newcomerProvision Networks, acquired in November 2007 by manage-

6: For more information and a detailed analysis of the Symantec acquisition of Altiris, see EMA Impact Brief, Symantec Consolidates Its

Management Story with Acquisition of Altiris - http://www.enterprisemanagement.com/research/ema_product.php?product=4000_1261 7: N.B. As at April 2008, Symantec had entered into (but not yet closed) a denitive agreement to acquire AppStream, giving Symantec acombined 22% market share - still only enough for fourth spot in this space.8: For more information and a detailed analysis of the Microsoft acquisition of Kidaro, see EMA Impact Brief, Microsoft Acquires Kidaro - http://www.enterprisemanagement.com/research/ema_product.php?product=4000_1575

aken as a single vendor,Citrix leads this category

with 60% o all respondents. Microsot is second with59%, and VMware is a

very close third with 58%.

All three are separated by less than the margin o error or this research.







Page 2


ment software vendor Quest; and SIMtone (formerly XDS) with 3% – within the margin of errorfor this study.

It is hard to compare the two leading products – VMware VDI and Microsoft Terminal Services – astheir use cases are remarkably different (a common problem in virtualization in general). VDI is aimedsquarely at end users, while Terminal Services is a much more technical implementation; as a result,

VDI gains its market share mainly from end-user desktop deployments, while Terminal Services popu-larity is more likely to be as a result of widespread use by server administrators.

Citrix XenApp is also unique because this single product (albeit in different congurations) participatesin both the desktop and application virtualization markets. The position of XenDesktop is remarkablebecause – like Microsoft Hyper-V – it was still only in beta release at the time of this research. EMA

therefore expects this to spike dramatically upwards as the product becomes generally available.

Grid/Cluster Computing

W hich of the following grid/cluster products, i f any,do you have or are you planning to implement?

2%

11 %

14 %

15 %

15 %

19 %

21 %

53 %

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60%

Other

IBM HACMP

Sun (Cluster, SunFire Grid)

Sym antec Veri tas C lusters

HP S erv iceGuard

Oracle RAC

Linux Server Clustering

Microsoft C luster Server

Microsoft Windows Cluster Server dominates grid and cluster deployments with 53% of respondentseither using or planning a Cluster Server deployment. Well behind are alternative solutions including

the generic Linux Server Clustering with 21%, and Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) with18%. Microsoft has easily twice the penetration into virtualized enterprises as either solution. This

is understandable, as both are more aligned with niche requirements – Linux has a much smallerserver market share than Windows; Oracle RAC is a specic solution targeted at Oracle database and

application users.

Leading the non-Windows category for standalone grid and cluster is HP’s ServiceGuard with 15% of

respondents. It is somewhat surprising that this (and other UNIX solutions like Sun Cluster or SunFireGrid, at 14% of respondents, and IBM’s HACMP with 11%) is not more popular. These offeringsprovide excellent high availability and manageability for mission critical applications, on a variety of



Page 2


hardware. The low market share is most likely to be a simple reection of the lower market share of Linux and UNIX. HP ServiceGuard and IBM HACMP, for example, support both, while Sun Clustersupports just Solaris – but none support Microsoft Windows.

Overall Vendor Penetration

W hich of the fol lowing vendors/produ cts, i f any, do you have or are you p lanning to

implement (al l technologies)?

3%

3%

7%

8%

10 %

15 %

19 %

21 %

26 %

26 %

26 %

60 %

81 %

89 %

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

Endeavors

SIMtone

AppStream

Virtual Iron

Ques t

Parallels

S un

IBM

Oracle

Symantec

HP

Citrix

Microsoft

VMware

When looking at overall results for individual vendors (a category that, of course, excludes the many

free and open source alternatives such as Linux-based Xen, Linux KVM, OpenVZ, etc.), VMware is theoverall leader in virtualization, with current or planned deployments in 89% of all respondents. However,it is under a more serious threat than ever before, with Microsofthot on its heels at 81%, and Citrix well within reach at 60%.

Other vendors trail well behind – including HP, Symantec, andOracle (all with 26%), IBM (21%), Sun (19%), Parallels (15%),

and Quest/Provision Networks (10%). Considering the smallermarkets in which these vendors operate, and the limited num-

ber of products they provide, compared to the broad swathe of virtualization technologies offered by the three leaders, this is a

particularly good showing for many of these vendors.

From an equal starting point, VMware would appear to have a

difcult lead to catch. However, while VMware has offered asignicant stable of mature products for some time, Microsoft

VMware is the overall leader in virtualization,with current or planned deployments in 89% o

all respondents. However,it is under a more serious threat than ever beore,

with Microsot hot on its heels at 81%, and Citrix

well within reach at 60%.



Page 2


is just starting this race, and in the single most popular market segment, server virtualization, doesnot even have a generally available product. Similarly, in VMware’s strongest areas of server and OS virtualization, Citrix has only been in this space for less than six months at the time of this study, and

its latest desktop virtualization solution is not yet generally available.

There is certainly room for VMware to solidify its dominance, and even add technologies (like grid/

cluster) to its virtualization portfolio. However, it is clearly in a defending position, and against par-ticularly aggressive attacks from Microsoft in particular, EMA expects VMware to lose ground in thisextremely competitive landscape.

The Virtualization Complexity Triple-Threat When looking across each of the three most important layers of virtualization complexity – platforms,technologies, and vendors – a real problem rapidly becomes apparent.

Total numb er of different virtualization p latforms

21 %

27 %

23 %

14 %

8%

3%

0%

5%

10 %

15 %

20 %

25 %

30 %

1 2 3 4 5 6

Across all respondents, it can be seen that a complex, heteroge-

neous virtualization platform deployment is the norm. While 21%of enterprises have deployed or are deploying virtualization on asingle operating platform – mostly Windows – the remaining 79%are deploying on a heterogeneous platform base. Indeed, around

half of all enterprises are deploying virtualization on three plat-forms or more.

79% o all enterprises are deploying on a heterogeneous

platorm base; hal o all enterprises are deploying virtualization on three

platorms or more.



Page 2


Number of Virtualization Technologies (Total) per Enterprise

6%

8%

11 %

13 % 13 %

11 %

10 %

0%

2%

4%

6%

8%

10 %

12 %

14 %

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Number of Te chnologies

% o

f R e s p o n d e n t s

A similar – but even more complex – pattern arises when looking at the different virtualization technologies (server, OS, application,storage, etc.) that are in use at any given enterprise. Only 6% of allenterprises are currently using just a single virtualization technol-

ogy in at least some of their environment. By contrast, over 90%of all enterprises are using a mix of virtualization technologiesin their enterprise today, and almost 50% are using four or more

different virtualization technologies. This measure in particular isnot accounting for planned deployments, but rather only what isreported in use today.

Over 90% o all enterprises are using a mix o

virtualization technologies in their enterprise today,

and almost 50% are using our or more dierent

virtualization technologies.



Page 28


Number of Virtualizat ion Vendors (Total) per Enterprise

7%

20 %

24 %

18 %

12 %

7%

4%3%

2% 2%

0%

5%

10 %

15 %

20 %

25 %

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Number of Vendors

% O


A similarly complex environment becomes apparent when looking at the various virtualization ven-dors in the average enterprise. On average, each enterprise has four different vendors supplying virtualization technology. Only 7% of all enterprises have just a single supplier for their virtualizationtechnologies. Again, over 90% of all enterprises have multiple vendors. Almost 50% have four or

more virtualization vendors.

Number of Virtualization Platforms, Technologies,

And Vendors (Total) per Enterprise

2% 2%

4%

5%6%

5%

11 %

10 % 9%

8%

7%6%

6%

4% 4%

2%1%

1%

0%

2%

4%

6%

8%

10 %

12 %

3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

Total number of Platforms, Technologies, and Vendors

% o


When you put together these three layers of complexity – across platform, technology, and vendor

– you get an even more sobering picture. On average, each enterprise has 11 different platforms,technologies, and vendors to deal with in their virtualization environment alone. Only 2% of all enter-prises are dealing with a simple, homogeneous virtualization environment comprised of one platform,



Page 2


one technology, and one vendor. By far most enterprises (83%)are dealing with on average at least two of each. Over half of allenterprises (57%) are dealing with 10 or more platforms, tech-

nologies, and vendors. Almost 20% are dealing with 15 or more.

EMA research into Data Center Automation9 and other systems

management disciplines has clearly shown that complexity, inef-cient use of resources, and the cost of IT management are seriousissues for IT managers and staff alike. In that research, the needs

cited most often among the top three priorities, (with the percent-age of enterprises considering them a top three issue) were:

Freeing up resources for strategic projects instead of reghting (43%)

Reducing cost of manual operations and infrastructure management (41%)

Reducing complexity of operations and infrastructure management (35%) Without taking active steps to address the multiple layers of complexity, virtualization will confoundthese goals, as it makes the IT environment more complex and harder to manage, requiring more

people for routine operations, and increasing the cost of management. Processes and technologiesthat work to make the complexity of virtualization more manageable are therefore critical. This makes virtualization management the most important differentiator in this space – for vendors and enter-prises alike.

9: For a comprehensive analysis of Data Center Automation, including in-depth research data and analysis, see the EMA Research ReportData Center Automation: Delivering Fast, Efcient, and Reliable IT Services - http://www.enterprisemanagement.com/research/ema_product.php?product=5000_1471

•

•

•

On average, each enterprise has 11 dierent platorms,

technologies, and vendors to deal with in their virtualization environment alone. Only 2% have just

one o each; almost 20% are dealing with 15 or more.







Page 0


Case Study – Meeting Virtualization Audits withTripwire EnterprisePaul O’Neill is the Information Security Engineer for Ednancial Services, a student loan serviceprovider with operations in 5 states, over 600 employees, and around 1.5 million loan customers.

Ednancial’s IT environment consists of 180 physical servers, running predominantly Microsoftsystems and applications including Windows Server, Exchange, IIS, Content Management Server,Great Plains Dynamix, SQL Server, and BizTalk.

They rst deployed virtualization around 3 years ago, initially running VMware GSX and ESX,migrating to Microsoft Virtual Server around 18 months ago. They now have 70 virtual servers,

mostly for e-business test and development, but also for some production systems. A team of 14is responsible for managing the IT environment, including two employees directly responsible forthe virtual environment.

“With a small operations staff and a large development staff,” says Paul, “it was a challenge toidentify changes on the network.” Developers making production changes “on the y” wouldbreak online applications. “We were looking at outages that directly affected our customers,” says

Paul, leading directly to lost revenue. With customer transactions valued at “about $2-3000 going across the network a minute – that adds up if systems aren’t performing the way they are supposedto.” Inadequate change controls were also damaging their ability to pass annual SAS 70 audits, astheir auditors “were looking for clear separation of duties” and better change reporting.

To deal with these issues, Ednancial implemented Tripwire Enterprise – rst in their physicalenvironment, then (as part of their standard build) in their virtual environment as well.

“It has been a huge time saving in validating that the changes the development group said they were making, are the changes that are actually taking place,” says Paul. “Just the amount of time it

saves chasing down the cause of problems, it’s huge” in reducing and preventing downtime – withthe added benet that “when problems happen, we can cover them with fewer people.”

It has also made their audits easier and more successful. “When our SAS 70 auditors come back, assoon as they see we have Tripwire a lot of the questions go away,” says Paul. “When they ask for allthe change reports from specic dates, we can show them.” On just the rst audit with Tripwire,Paul says it “reduced the whole interview with auditors from 3 hours to around 45 minutes.” Now,

the auditors just e-mail Paul to ask him to send the Tripwire reports.

In a virtual environment, “all the benets continue to apply,” says Paul. “The one big difference

with virtualization is that if there is a change made to the host environment, it can impact all theguests. With Tripwire we know about it straight away. That is critical, because we aren’t wasting time chasing down virtuals. We know if it is a physical server problem.”

For Ednancial, Tripwire Enterprise has clearly paid off. It has delivered measurable cost savings,improved productivity, and reduced downtime; and it has directly enabled them to meet their

rigorous audit requirements.



Page


The State of Virtualization ManagementPerceptions of Virtualization Management

EMA asked enterprises to rate which disciplines became easier, which stayed the same, and whichbecame harder in a virtual environment. Overall, a majority of enterprises rate all management disci-plines as either easier or the same in a virtual environment. However, it is more informative to look

separately at those that are rated easier, and those that are rated harder. The percentages of all enter-prises that rated each discipline as easier or harder are summarized below.

W hich of the fol lowing man agement dicipl ines become

easier with virtualization (select al l that app ly)?

24 %

24 %

25 %

29 %

32 %

33 %

33 %

37 %

42 %

43 %

49 %

49 %

50 %

64 %

65 %

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70%

Incident Management

Security Administration

Problem Management

Change Management

Software Control/Distribution

Software Updates

Software Patching

S LM

Conf iguration Management

Application Provisioning

IT Cost Management

Capaci ty Management

Availabil ity Manage me nt

OS Provis ioning

D R / B C P

Not surprisingly, the disciplines that become easier match up reasonably well with the virtualization

drivers and outcomes. For example, 65% of enterprises consider that Disaster Recovery and BusinessContinuity Planning (DR/BCP) becomes easier in a virtual environment. With sophisticated manage-ment facilities built into (or available as add-ons to) virtualization for live migration, high availability,data migration, and more, this is a solid outcome, and certainly

likely to become easier. Similarly, OS provisioning – seen by 64%of enterprises as easier – is facilitated by the ease of deploy-ment of pre-built virtual images, and the hardware independencethat the virtualization layer provides. Difculties in availability

and capacity can be quickly addressed, at least after the fact, by rapid provisioning of more resources, or through live migration

Overall, a majority o enterprises rate all

management disciplines as either easier or the same in

a virtual environment.



Page 2


onto a bigger, faster server. As such, these disciplines are also rated most often as easier in a virtualenvironment, by 50% and 49% of respondents respectively. Rounding out the top ve is IT CostManagement, rated by 49% of enterprises as becoming easier under virtualization. This is substan-

tially due to virtualization’s ability to maximize server and storage utilization, to replace thick desktopPCs with thin clients, to roll out new products and services – and specically the applications andsystems they depend on – quickly and easily, often without buying new hardware.

W hich of the fol lowing man agement dicipl ines become

harder with virtualization (select al l that apply)?

6%

7%

7%

7%

8%

9%

10 %

11 %

11 %

13 %

13 %

14 %

14 %

15 %

16 %

0% 2% 4% 6% 8% 10% 12% 14% 16% 18%

Availabil ity Manage me nt

S LM

Application Provisioning


D R / B C P

OS Provis ioning

Software Updates

IT Cost Management

Software Patching

Change Management

Incident Management

Conf iguration Management

Capaci ty Management

Problem Management


Looking at those that are rated harder by some enterprises is particularly sobering, and potentially of more value to enterprises embarking in virtualization for the rst time.

Security is, to many, the number one issue in virtualization man-agement, and of all the management disciplines is the one thatmost enterprises – albeit only 16% – believe gets harder under

virtualization. The lack of visibility, dynamic nature of VMs, thelack of process management, and the added possibilities for attack

are all signicant issues affecting the management of virtualizationsecurity. As with security in a physical environment, however, bet-

ter tools are not the whole answer. Enterprises need to seek outa three-pillared approach to resolving these issues that includespeople, process, and technology.

Security is the number one issue in virtualizationmanagement, and o all

the management disciplines is the one that most

enterprises believe gets harder under virtualization.



Page


Problem and incident management is another critical issue in virtualization, and respectively the sec-ond highest percentage (15%) and fth highest percentage (13%) of enterprises respectively ratedthese disciplines as getting harder under virtualization. Simply identifying and reacting to incidents can

become much more difcult. The abstraction of compute resources in the virtual environment tendsto obfuscate potentially serious service issues, making it difcult not just to resolve the underlying cause of problems, but also to identify the incidents when they occur. The multiple layers of complex-

ity, across multiple hosts, guests, vendors, platforms, and technologies, introduce a myriad of additionaldifculties. More skills are needed, more time, more data, and more technologies. Enterprises shouldlook for technologies designed to work across the multiple layers of complexity, which proactively measure, monitor, alert, isolate, diagnose, and report on problems automatically, based on customiz-

able thresholds and policies, to reduce the pain of problem management in a virtual environment.

Capacity management, one of the top disciplines that becomes easier, is also one of the top disciplines

that becomes harder in a virtual environment. This apparent contradiction is almost certainly a dif-ference only of approach, and of maturity. Many enterprises solve capacity management problems

by waiting until they happen, and then allocating more (and more, and more) resources until they goaway. However, especially in a larger or more mature environment, this is no solution at all. It addresses

merely the symptoms, not the cause, and works directly against key drivers to consolidate and improveefciency. Enterprises looking for a true capacity management solution in a virtual environment needto look for sophisticated tools that understand resource allocation and usage across the physical and

virtual ecosystems, and across the full range of the virtual environment (hosts, guests, hypervisors,clients, storage systems, network components, etc.). Using this sophisticated understanding, enterprisescan predict capacity requirements and get ahead of potential problems, while still meeting the key goalsof their virtualization deployment.

Rounding out the top ve disciplines that enterprises believebecome harder under virtualization is conguration management,

selected by 14% of enterprises as harder in a virtual environment. With the ability to randomly stand up a virtual image, with few of the necessary procedural stop points of a physical deployment – server procurement, hardware installation, etc. – conguration

management becomes much more critical in a virtual environment.In focal interviews EMA has discussed situations where an entirecall center came to a halt because an administrator accidentally

started a rogue virtual machine with a duplicate DHCP server, causing IP collisions and other network problems that stopped the entire call center from accessing critical applications. The ability to rapidly deploy an unauthorized Active Directory server, or expose an unpatched virtual Web server to theInternet, can lead to increased risk, governance and compliance failures, and major security breaches.

A signicant part of the solution to such difculties is in ensuring people understand and avoid these

potential problems, and in dening and applying processes to maintain appropriate congurations.Conguration management solutions that work in real time to detect and remediate rogue VM deploy -ment, as well as unpatched and otherwise out-of-policy virtual systems, are also critical to prevent such

productivity and security problems in a virtual environment.

An entire call center came to a

halt because an administrator accidentally started a rogue

virtual machine with a duplicate DHCP server.



Page


Integrating Virtual and Physical Management

W hich of the fol lowing best describes the management software that you are curr ently

using specifically in your virtual environment?

9%

29 %

20 %

17 %

10 %

14 %

1%

Ful ly m anual , no managem ent tools

Bundled virtualization vendor tools

Add-on virtualization vendor tools

Standard physical managem ent tools

Purpos e-built virtualization tools

Purpos e-built physical/virtual tools

Other

EMA believes that a major factor in dealing with these management difculties, and the broader prob-

lems of virtualization complexity, lies in integrated toolsets that effectively manage the physical and virtual environment.

However, many enterprises do not seem to be taking this approach.

Almost 10% of all enterprises are using no virtualization manage-ment tools at all. This fully manual approach, beyond a certain

(relatively small) scale, is completely unsustainable. EMA researchshows convincingly that manual management leads to increasedrate of errors, downtime and availability issues, poor response torequests, and higher staff costs.

Almost one third of all enterprises (29%) do not have any additional management tools for their virtual environment, beyond the tools that came bundled with their virtualization technologies. Anadditional 20% only use the additional tools available from their virtualization vendors. These tools

can be very good in limited use cases – for VM migration, virtual desktop deployment, cluster man-agement, etc. However, they do not address a core part of the complexity of virtual environments – the tendency to have multiple virtualization vendors. This approach ends up with as many tools asthere are vendors, and with 90% of all enterprises having multiple virtualization vendors, and 50%

having four or more, enterprises using this approach will end up with uncontrollable and non-inte-grated virtual environments.

Only 10% use third-party tools designed for managing virtual environments. This is a good way tohandle the virtualization complexity triple-threat – the complexity of platforms, technologies, and vendors – but it still does not handle the complexity of managing physical and virtual environments

together. As this research shows, in most enterprises the majority of the IT environment is still physi-cal. Using separate tools for physical and virtual management can address many of the multiple layersof virtualization complexity, but does nothing to simplify the entire IT ecosystem.

Almost 10% o all enterprises are using no virtualizationmanagement tools at all.



Page


In the driver’s seat are the 14% of enterprises using management technologies designed to integrate themanagement of both virtual and physical environments. These tools generally are capable of attacking all the major layers of complexity by supporting multiple platforms, technologies, and vendors, across

both physical and virtual environments. This in turn frees up staff from tactical operations to engage instrategic projects, reduces the costs of enterprise management, and provides the benets of integrationacross the environment. While such tools are rare – and to date at least remain far from comprehensive

– they are the only way to overcome the problems caused by virtualization complexity.

Integrating Virtualization Management with Enterprise IT Management

W hich of the following descriptions apply to your

virtualization man agement to ols? Select al l that apply.

21 %

19 %

14 %

21 %

22 %

25 %

26 %

30 %

0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35%

None of the above

Manages all virtualization

platforms

Integrates with a BSM

framework

Integrates with standard ESM

tools

Manages all virtualization

technologies

Manages both physical and

virtual environments

Manages all virtualizationvendors

Manages both virtual hosts and

guests

The signicant issue with specialized virtualization management tools is that they do not, for the mostpart, integrate with the rest of the IT management stack. Only 25% of enterprises are using manage-ment tools that are able to manage across both the physical and virtual environments. Even fewer tools

are specically designed for both physical and virtual environments. Only 21% of management tools inuse are able to integrate effectively with other enterprise system management (ESM) tools. Enterprisesare left to manage their physical environment with one toolset, and their virtual environment with

another. In most cases, management tools do not even integrate with other virtualization managementtools, or even across layers of the virtualization stack. Only 30% of management tools in use can even

manage both virtual host and guest environments.

These disconnects can cause major problems – for example, simply triaging an availability or perfor-mance issue becomes a major process. Administrators and managers must waste time trying to coordi-nate and correlate data and analysis across physical and virtual people, processes, and technologies. As

if triage were not difcult enough, precious cycles are added to the downtime just trying to correlate



Page


physical and virtual issues between multiple management tools. This disconnect and added complexity will invariably lead to human errors, inefciencies, increased risk, and other management problems.

When looking at the virtualization triple-threat, the outcomes are even bleaker. Only 19% of enter-prises have management tools that can manage all of the virtualization platforms in use in these enter-prises; only 22% can manage all of the virtualization technologies; and only 26% can manage all the

virtualization vendors. At best, less than one fth of enterprises are able to address the virtualizationtriple-threat through their current management tools.

This research also clearly shows that a very low number of man-agement tools in use – only 14% – enable IT to focus on higher-level objectives, and to align IT services with business objectives (a

process known as Business Service Management, of BSM). EMAresearch has shown that this approach is very popular, as it providesa key differentiator that allows companies to be more strategic,more competitive, and more efcient, yet virtualization manage-

ment tools are mostly unable to work within this paradigm.

Management tools in the virtualization space are signicantly lack -

ing. While several management software vendors are producing very good tools, they clearly need to do more. Enterprises needbetter integration, better manageability, and more comprehensivetoolsets if they are to adequately address the multiple layers of

complexity in the virtual environment.

Enterprises are let to manage their physical environment with one toolset, and their virtual environment with

another. In most cases,management tools do not even integrate with other

virtualization management tools, or even across layers o the virtualization stack.



Page


Case Study – Ensuring Virtualization Performance with eG Innovations eG Monitor for VMware James is a Senior Technical Engineer for a global consumer products company with around 5000employees and a million independent sales agents delivering over $2 billion in sales worldwide.

With data centers in the US, UK, and Asia, they are running 25-30 VMware ESX servers, support-ing around 400 virtual machines, running domain controllers, production Web servers, MicrosoftProject servers, Citrix licensing servers, antivirus servers, and virtual desktops. They have just 7staff to manage all their IT infrastructure – hardware, operating systems, and applications – and

just 1 person to manage their virtual environment.

In 2003 they started to deploy VMware, and like many environments started with just the basic

VirtualCenter management toolset. However, James says, “VirtualCenter is not very detailed – when you try to look at multiple VMs together, there’s no way to do that; if I want to look at 10 VMs together to see how they are performing, it doesn’t give me that kind of insight.”

James was spending hours every month on management reporting, “pulling data out of VirtualCenter, putting it into charts, making it look right – and I had to customize it every time there wasa little change.” Despite his effort, without accurate, real-time metrics, they were “ying blindly,”

deploying a maximum of 4 VMs per core regardless of actual utilization. “We were not saving as much as we could,” says James, “because we needed that low ratio to be sure we maintainedperformance and service levels.”

When they started to expand their virtualization deployment internationally, this rough methodol-ogy was not reliable, scalable, or cost-effective – and it made senior global VPs very uncomfort-

able. James needed accurate capacity monitoring and planning, with real-time alerting, driven by policy-based thresholds for specic metrics.

After a formal evaluation of eight different solutions, James selected the eG Monitor solutionfrom eG Innovations. In just 3 months, the results have already been just what James needed.

It provides the real-time monitoring, alerts, threshold triggered actions, and automatic problem

ticket generation that James was looking for. “Other solutions felt very limited by comparison,” hesays. They now have “better server-to-VM ratios that are based in reality, not just a ‘best guess’,”allowing them to “load up multi-CPU systems with multiple virtual systems,” increasing hardware

utilization and cost savings. They spend less time on routine work, because VMs are now “easierand faster to manage and administer,” says James. “I can spend less time to get the informationthat I need. On a monthly basis, this will save me about 5-6 hours.” And with a “very nice report-ing function – which was especially important to the management team,” global VPs get the

availability – and the reassurance – that they need.

Through better server utilization, improved resource efciency, greater cost savings, and more

accurate metrics – not to mention saving almost a day of James’ time every month on reportgeneration alone, and the peace-of-mind it gives the worldwide VPs – the eG Innovations solutionhas certainly delivered the results James needed.







Page 0


management team for virtualization in 71% of all enterprises. Thisgroup is likely also responsible for physical server management, which highlights two important outcomes. First, it is a very positive

sign that physical and virtual systems management are integrated within a single team in most enterprises – this is a much moreefcient and effective way to manage the environment than having

a separate virtualization team, and EMA believes that this is a bestpractice in virtualization management. Second, this makes it evenmore imperative that management software is similarly integrated. The ability of the server administration team to manage these

environments efciently, with minimal error, and with greatestproductivity, is greatly hampered if they are forced to use disparatetools for different infrastructures. In addition, management costs are increased by having duplicate

people, processes, and/or technologies for what should be a single management requirement.

While the server administration team is clearly the main group responsible for virtualization manage-ment, the Operating System administration team and the Network Operations team are both respon -

sible for management in 37% of enterprises, and the Data Center Operations team is responsible in34% of enterprises. Signicant in these numbers is that virtualization management does still spanmultiple teams.

Number of departments responsible for overall

virtualization delivery and managem ent per en terprise

33 %

23 %

19 %

9%

6%5%

3% 3%

0%

5%

10 %

15 %

20 %

25 %

30 %

35 %

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Number of D epar tments

% O


As can be seen, many enterprises (33%) have only one department responsible for delivering and man-aging their virtualization deployments. This centralization can certainly be benecial to cost reduction,efciency, skill maintenance, and more. However, in the majority (67%) of enterprises, this responsibil-

ity is split among multiple teams, and over a quarter (26%) of all enterprises have four or more teams

Only 21% o enterprises have a separate virtualization

management team. Te existing server management group is by ar the most

popular locus o responsibility or delivery and management

o virtualization.



Page


responsible for virtualization management. If managementtools and processes were more integrated, this might indi-cate that virtualization is being managed in an integrated

and unobtrusive way, alongside other disciplines, and withineach appropriate ownership area (OS admin, Server Admin,Network Ops, etc.). Unfortunately, as this research has

shown, integration of management tools and processesis still not the reality in a vast majority of enterprises, andalmost half of all enterprises are having signicant prob-lems with cooperation across IT areas. This separation (and

duplication) of duties is therefore more likely to be a resultof silo-based IT management, and a lack of cooperationacross these different teams, despite using a common technology. This is an error-prone and inefcient

approach that further stretches the already very thin virtualization skills across multiple departments,and as such may well cause signicant difculties. Certainly in more mature organizations, and as

management tools become more sophisticated and better integrated, it will be desirable to manage virtualization infrastructure the same way we manage physical infrastructure. However, there is no

evidence that this is possible in any signicant way with current technologies, so enterprises should be very wary of separating virtualization management among multiple teams.

In the majority (67%) o enterprises, virtualization

management responsibility is split among multiple teams,and over a quarter (26%) o all enterprises have our or more teams responsible or

virtualization management.



Page 2


Case Study – Ensuring Virtualization Compliance with Tripwire EnterprisePaul is the Director of Information Security for a large nancial services rm with several thou-sand employees, and several million customers. Their IT environment of 400 UNIX systems(Solaris and AIX), 600 Windows Servers, and a zSeries mainframe is managed by a total of around

340 employees, almost 200 of whom are involved in day-to-day operational management.

Their virtual environment consists of Sun Logical Domains (LDOMs), IBM Logical Partitions

(LPARS) on z/OS and AIX, Sun Solaris Containers, and VMware ESX servers. With such acomplex environment, Paul says, “Knowing exactly what our footprint is represents a challenge.” Virtualization in particular removed many of the “helpful barriers” that prevented rogue changes – like hardware provisioning, procurement, authorization, etc. As a result, rogue deployment of

critical infrastructure, like DHCP or Active Directory servers, has the potential to create techni-cal problems, service issues, and outages that directly affect business users. These problems, if

realized, could also reduce business condence in IT, raising the prospect, says Paul, of “having ‘shadow IT’, with [business] departments running critical applications on local desktops, and then

not getting mission-critical management and support.”

Paul needed what he described as a ‘visible ops’ approach, explaining, “If you don’t have a tool

to manage change over hundreds of VMs, you are creating huge problems.” As a company thatis continually growing, he also needed to start dealing with VM management in a more focused,planned, and scalable way. Another major catalyst for them was their adoption of IT Infrastructure

Library (ITIL) best practices. “If we were to adopt ITIL and to treat our IT as a business service, we needed to have a much higher level of control,” says Paul.

The company has used Tripwire Enterprise in their physical environment since 2003, so when

looking to solve these problems in their virtual environment, says Paul, “Tripwire just makessense.”

Even in such a complex environment, “it can give me visibility into what’s changed,” says Paul.“We want ‘trust, but verify’ – and detective tools like Tripwire allow you to see what is really occurring.” This ows directly through to audit and compliance. “It helps to enforce deployment

policies and procedures,” says Paul, without a large post-facto analysis effort. “You may think youhave a great change management process, but until you have a tool to conrm it, you can neverbe sure.” And when the unexpected does happen, he says, “it gives me the insight to differentiatebetween accidental problems caused by some ‘cowboy’, and real malicious behavior.” With a ser-

vice management focus driven by ITIL, Paul states, “Anything we can do to stabilize IT to supportthe business lets us deliver better service.”

With Tripwire, Paul fully expects to achieve several important objectives in both virtual and physi-cal environments, including conguration audit and compliance, higher availability, and the bettercompliance with ITIL best practices that improve their service delivery.



Page


From 2006 to 2008 – and BeyondIncreasing Penetration of Virtualization Technologies

In August 2006, EMA conducted a similar research study into virtualization, Virtualization: Exposing the Intangible Enterprise 10. This was one of the earliest empirical studies to look at actual enterprise useof virtualization, including many of the same metrics that have been gathered in this report. This has

given EMA the unique opportunity to provide detailed, accurate, and data-driven insight into the long-term attitudes, behaviors, and outcomes in the virtualization and virtualization management arenas.

In our 2006 research, EMA looked at the future of virtualization based on enterprises’ reported plansto deploy various virtualization technologies in at least some of their environment within the coming 12-24 months11. In that report, EMA wrote:

Across the board, (the results show) a market that is increasing by approximately 26% on average. In percentage

terms, storage and le system virtualization will experience the highest growth rate, both increasing by over 30%,

followed by desktop (28%), application (24%), operating system (21%) and server virtualization (20%).

Percentage of respondents reporting at least some of their enterprise has deployed the

following tec hnologies (2006 vs. 200 8)

58%

50%

42%

30%

26%

23%

80 %

71 %

59 %

67 %

46 %

60 %

54 %

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90%

Server

O S

Application

Storage

Desktop

File System

Network

20062008

10: For the complete research report, Virtualization: Exposing the Intangible Enterprise , see http://www.enterprisemanagement.com/research/ema_product.php?product=5000_1147 11: N.B.: These gures are relevant to this measurement only, and are not a sales prediction. They are not ascertained from vendor reportsof products sold, but rather from enterprise reports of actual deployments. This provides a prediction specically for the number of enterprises that will have at least some of each virtualization technology in their environment, but does not necessarily indicate the numberof virtualization products that will be sold.







Page


Actual reported growth 2006-2008

21 %20 %

18 %

36 %

20 %

37 %

0%

5%

10 %

15 %

20 %

25 %

30 %

35 %

40 %

Server O S Application S torage D esktop File S ys tem

The latest EMA research has shown that these predictions were remarkably accurate. Comparing thepercentage of each enterprise reporting at least some virtualization technology in 2006, with the per-centage of enterprises with the same level of virtualization in 2008, enterprises have reported an

actual overall growth rate (i.e., the difference between percentagesfrom 2006 to 2008) across all technologies of 26% – exactly asEMA predicted in 2006. Similarly, server virtualization has grownby 20%, and OS virtualization has grown by 21%, again match-

ing 2006 EMA predictions exactly. Storage virtualization and lesystem virtualization also grew as predicted at over 30% – spe-cically, at 36% and 37% respectively. Desktop and application

virtualization both grew marginally more slowly than predicted, at

20% and 18% respectively. Figures for network virtualization werenot collected in the 2006 research.

In how much of your environment do you plan

to deploy the following virtualization technologies?

12 %

8%

8%

6%

8%

12 %

7%

10 %

36 %

24 %

21 %

12 %

16 %

27 %

19 %

20 %

19 %

17 %

15 %

15 %

14 %

14 %

13 %

14 %

23 %

30 %

28 %

28 %

32 %

28 %

29 %

31 %

6%

14 %

17 %

20 %

18 %

12 %

16 %

15 %

3%

8%

11 %

18 %

11 %

7%

15 %

10 %

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

Server

OS

Application

Streaming

Desktop

Storage

Network

File System

% or tota l responden ts

All

Mos t

Half

S o me

F ewNone

Enterprises have reported anactual overall growth rate

rom 2006 to 2008 across all technologies o 26% – exactly as EMA predicted in 2006.



Page


Looking in detail at how enterprises with virtualization expect toexpand their deployments in future, here again we see evidenceof irrational exuberance tempered with reality. Contrary to some

external (notably vendor-driven) predictions, most environments will not be completely virtual, at least through 2010, and prob-ably well beyond. In fact, the reality revealed by actual enterprise

plans is that through 2010, no virtualization technology will evenbe the dominant architecture. In fact, only 12% of enterprisesexpect to deploy server virtualization for all of their environ-ment; and only 8% expect to deploy OS virtualization, applica-

tion virtualization, or desktop virtualization for their entire envi-ronment. Even looking at enterprises that expect just half of their environment to be virtualized, penetration will be far from complete. Just over a third (36%) of

all respondents expect to deploy server virtualization for half of their environment, less than a quarter(24%) expect to deploy OS virtualization for half of their environment; 21% expect to deploy applica-

tion virtualization for half of their environment; and only 16% expect to deploy desktop virtualizationfor half of their environment.

Asking how many enterprises will deploy virtualization is not the same as asking how much virtualizationeach enterprise will deploy. Clearly, the overall number of enterprises deploying virtualization will be

signicant, but just as clearly virtualization will not be dominant in most enterprises. Purely physicalsystems will continue not only to exist, but indeed to dominate most enterprise environments for thenear future at least, and likely for some time to come. This reinforces the need for management solu-tions and skills that handle both physical and virtual systems, at least for the foreseeable future.

This does not, of course, predict overall market (i.e. product sales) growth - the qualied respondentsin this research are primarily already involved with virtualization, making this an unsuitable sample for

broader market predictions. Nor does it predict the number of enterprises that will ‘dip their toes’ into virtualization in some limited ways - previous EMA research has shown this will be as high as 96% of all enterprises. However, based on the growth rates shown to date, the deployment predictions fromsurveyed enterprises, and the percentage of respondents planning an initial virtualization deployment

in the coming 12 months, EMA estimates the virtualization market to grow by around 20% on averagefor all virtualization technologies through the next 12-24 months, with the strongest growth coming from desktop and application virtualization.

A Warning about Growth for End-User Facing Virtualization TechnologiesEspecially in light of enterprise expectations for desktop virtualization, it is important to note that while enterprises in 2006 expected an aggressive uptake of both desktop and application virtualization,both actually grew more slowly than expected. The two technologies that failed to meet growth expec-

tation are the two technologies that most directly affect end users. Most virtualization technologies(server, OS, storage, etc.) tend to be deployed in data center environments, handled by competenttechnicians, with little or no direct exposure to end users. Desktop and application virtualization, by contrast, directly affect non-technical end users, and often require a change in work processes, even if

only in minor ways.

Trough 2010, novirtualization technology will even be the dominant

architecture. Physical systems will continue to

dominate most environments or the near uture.



Page


This implies that while enterprises nd it relatively easy to deploy virtualization technologies focusedon the data center, they are nding it harder than expected to deploy virtualization technologies thatare directly exposed to end users. Streaming and other virtual application deployment technologies are

certainly getting better, more sophisticated desktop virtualization technologies are making more ‘nor-mal’ operations (listening to music, using varied peripherals, etc.) possible, and networking technologiesare reducing the more obvious effects of long-distance computing. So virtualization is becoming less

intrusive from the end user perspective. However, both desktop and application virtualization – andthe infrastructures that surround and enable them – still require some intrinsic changes before they aretruly transparent to end users.

Until these changes happen, EMA expects enterprises to continueto have some difculties exposing virtualization to end users,and to continue to over-estimate their plans for these end-user

facing virtualization technologies. EMA believes that this trend will likely continue, because the fundamental issues created by

exposing virtualization to end users are not being addressed insubstantial ways. Predictions for the growth of both desktop and

application virtualization should therefore be tempered by theseexpected, but for the most part unrealized, difculties.

Therefore enterprises need to be very careful in the ways they approach such technologies. IT needs to deal with thorny politicalissues, and work closely with end users. IT needs to deliver what

the business needs, and not only what they need. Specic recom-mendations to improve the chance of successfully deploying end-user facing virtualization technologies include:

Accommodate user differences – avoid a ‘lowest common denominator’ approach; instead think

about specic desktop and application components that should be remote, what should be local, which types of users need which types of virtualization, and evaluate overall service delivery to

end users in terms of business needs.

Deploy compatible environments – test for incompatibilities between virtualization and bothhardware and software; make sure to evaluate and test candidate applications, especially those

that rely on local hardware – because not all applications will support virtualization, technically or commercially.

Ensure network compatibility – do not deploy network-dependent virtualization technologies

(remote desktop virtualization, application streaming, etc.) indiscriminately across low-bandwidthor unstable networks. Test connectivity so you can avoid unsuitable networks and/or use WANoptimization technology where appropriate to maximize network resources.

Maintain server availability – sharing a single server to deliver multiple virtual desktops orapplications increases reliance on that server. Make sure to deploy high availability technologiesand have a DR plan (which may involve server virtualization) to ensure uptime and availability of shared resources.

•

•

•

•

While enterprises nd it relatively easy to deploy

virtualization technologies ocused on the data

center, they are nding it harder than expected to deploy virtualization

technologies that are directly exposed to end users.



Page


Manage human issues – politics and ignorance can raise powerful roadblocks, so make sureto educate end users and their managers, set reasonable and achievable expectations, andestablish SLAs to ensure priorities and service availability. Remember to ensure that IT teams

are appropriately trained to support end users with their virtualization issues, and (needless tosay) strive to meet and exceed SLAs to establish and maintain trust.

Changing Virtualization Platforms

On w hat operating systems o r platforms are you using or planning to u se virtualization

technology (2006 vs 2008)?

0%

7%

67 %

34 %

38 %

89 %

4%

4%

23 %

31 %

46 %

96 %

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100% 120%

Other

z /OS

UNIX

Storage Devices

Linux (all)

W indows

2006

2008

It is interesting to see Windows slip back a little as a virtualization platform. In 2006, 96% of all

enterprises were using Windows in their virtualization environment; in 2008, that dropped to 89% – within just two percentage points of the margin of error for both studies. Linux has also dropped,moving down from 46% of deployments in 2006, to 38% in 2008. Storage platforms as a locus for virtualization have grown – from 31% to 34% – as has mainframe z/OS – from 4% to 7% (which again

is difcult to compare to other platforms, given that nearly doubling mainframe compute power is notunlike deploying hundreds or even thousands of additional x86 servers).

The growth of UNIX as a virtualization platform from 23% of enterprises in 2006 to 67% in 2008is extraordinary – and unlikely. Given than EMA Data Center Automation research has shown thaton average, enterprise plans for UNIX deployment are essentially stalled, and even declining, an increase in the percentage of enter-

prises deploying UNIX as a virtualization platform is difcult to

accept on face value. It is possible that respondents are simply better educated on the broader platform choices for virtualizationtoday than in 2006, and so understand that UNIX is a virtualized

operating system, where perhaps they did not fully understand thistwo years ago. It may also be that additional education has enlight-ened enterprises to the possibilities of UNIX-based virtualization,

•

Te growth o UNIX as a

virtualization platorm rom 23% o enterprises in 2006 to67% in 2008 is extraordinary

… and unlikely.



Page 8


such as HP Secure Resource Partitions or Solaris Containers, and to the availability of additional facili-ties for virtualizing in and on UNIX, such as VMware support for x86 Solaris, or IBM’s new PowerVM.It may be that a need to reduce expenditure on UNIX hardware (which would account for the sig -

nicant drop in UNIX deployment plans EMA has seen) is resulting in an increasing virtualizationof UNIX operating systems on other commodity (x86) hardware. Nevertheless, this result does seemanomalous in the context of otherwise shrinking UNIX deployments.

Changing Virtualization Workloads

W hat types of workloads have you deployed

virtualization techn ology for 2006 vs 2008)?

1%

41 %

45 %

47 %

47 %

50 %

51 %

74 %

79 %

12 %

26 %

5%

47 %

21 %

30 %

29 %

64 %

74 %

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90%

Other

Production Middleware

Sys tems

End-User Desktops


Data/Storage Management

Sys tems





2006

2008

Average growth rate for virtualization workloads 2006-2008

58 %

741%

0%

120%

66 %

75 %

16 %

6%

0% 100% 200% 300% 400% 500% 600% 700% 800%

Product ion Middleware System s

End-User Desktops


Data/Storage Management System s







Page


Across the board, as virtualization deployments have increased, current and planned deployments forall signicant workloads have also increased. Test and development environments are still growing – from 74% of all enterprises in 2006 to 79% in 2008 – but are not the largest growth workload for

virtualization. That honor belongs to end-user desktops, which grew from just 5% of all enterprises in2006, to 45% of enterprises in 2008. It is important to note that this does not reect the penetrationlevel (all, some, most, etc.) within the average enterprise for desktop virtualization – as can be seen

elsewhere in this report, that is a much different outcome. However, it does show a dramatic increasein the number of enterprises that are at least trying out virtualization for or on end-user desktops.

Other signicant growth areas include data and storage manage-ment systems, more than doubling from 21% in 2006 to 47% in2008, and of course disaster recovery workloads – a mainstay of virtualization and a key driver for virtualization deployments

– increasing from 29% in 2006 to 51% in 2008. The typical three-tier production stack of application, database, and Web server also

grew, although not uniformly. Virtualization for production appli-cations grew from 64% to 74% of enterprises; virtualization of

production database servers grew from 30% to 50%. Virtualizationof production Web servers stayed static, within a percentage pointof 47% in both 2006 and 2008.

A key outcome here is that deployment of virtualization for many different production workloads justkeeps growing. In 2006, EMA asserted that virtualization was ready for prime time (as if there was any

doubt). In 2008, the constant rise of virtualization for production workloads – including the typicalthree-tier production stack, as well as middleware, DR, and end-user desktops – continues to prove thatto be true. This trend will no doubt continue.

There is no reason to believe that similar growth rates will not be achieved though 2010, and even

beyond. All forms of virtualization are still growing, and fewer and fewer workloads will not run in a virtual environment. There is even growing acceptance of solutions for virtualizing traditionally more

‘difcult’ workloads – such as databases or e-mail servers, which tend to saturate resources like CPUand network interfaces. EMA therefore expects to see these workload growth rates continue, and evenstrengthen, through 2010.

Across the board, as virtualization deployments have increased, deployments

or all signicant workloads have also increased.



Page 0


Changing Virtualization Drivers

Please rate the importance of each of the fol lowing drivers in your decision to implement

virtualization (O nly 'Critical' drivers show n)

69 %

62 %

62 %

60 %

59 %

53 %

44 %

41 %

38 %

37 %

65 %

65 %

50 %

72 %

68 %

57 %

48 %

50 %

21 %

35 %

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80%


Reduce downt ime


Enable DR/BCP



Meet SLAs

Improve security and control



2006

2008

The reasons for deploying virtualization have changed somewhat since 2006, but not substantially.

Certainly there has been a lot of coverage in IT journals and from vendors (and from some ana-lysts) describing virtualization as, rather shortsightedly, “a consolidation technology.” Some deni -tions even describe virtualization as “running multiple operating systems on a single server,” reducing

virtualization to one technology, one use case, and one outcome.

Key drivers have shifted marginally from some strategic benets – such as one of the leading drivers in2006, increased agility and exibility, which 68% of enterprises previously rated as critical, compared to

59% in 2008 – toward some more immediate project-based drivers like server consolidation, improvedhardware utilization, and reduced hardware costs.

Nevertheless, while the places have changed, the differences aremostly relatively small. Enabling DR and BCP is among the big-gest movers, dropping as a critical driver for 72% of enterprisesin 2006, to just 60% in 2008. Another relatively big change was

in the desire to rationalize or regain oor space. In 2006, 38%of enterprises considered that a critical driver; in 2008, only 21%are expecting this outcome. It seems that many enterprises have

realized virtualization can be part of a rationalization project, butin most cases consolidating workloads does not result in less hardware – just better performance for existing workloads, and morecapacity for new workloads. This does, however, help to delay or

Key drivers have shited marginally rom some

strategic benets toward some more immediate project-based drivers like server consolidation, improved

hardware utilization, and reduced hardware costs.



Page


eliminate spending on new hardware, which is reected in the change in this as a critical driver in 50%of enterprises in 2006, to 62% in 2008. The perception of improved security has moved from 50% in2006, to 41% in 2008, reecting the growing concern over virtualization security, and the increasing

difculty managing security in this increasingly complex environment.

Other changes have been much less substantial. Desire to reduce downtime has only slipped from

65% in 2006 to 62% in 2008; lower administration and management costs has gone from 57% to 53%;meeting SLAs has dropped from 48% to 44%; and even the new leading driver, consolidation, has only moved up from 65% to 69%. All of these are actually within the margin of error for this research, and

are therefore statistically insignicant changes.

Changing Perceptions of Virtualization Management

Please rate whether v i r tualizat ion makes any of

the fol lowing management discipl ines easier

24 %

24 %

25 %

29 %

32 %

33 %

33 %

37 %

42 %

43 %

49 %

49 %

50 %

64 %

65 %

39 %

42 %

42 %

55 %

58 %

46 %

44 %

40 %

51 %

61 %

63 %

55 %

71 %

58 %

75 %

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80%

Incident Managem ent


Problem Management

Change Management


Software Updates

Software Patching

SLM

Configuration Managem ent

Application P rovisioning

IT Cost Managem ent

Capacity Management

Availability Managem ent

OS Provisioning

DR/BCP

2006

2008



Page 2


Please rate whether virtualization makes any of the

following manage ment d isciplines har der

6%

7%

7%

7%

8%

9%

10 %

11 %

11 %

13 %

13 %

14 %

14 %

15 %

16 %

4%

6%

6%

5%

4%

4%

5%

5%

6%

8%

10 %

13 %

10 %

13 %

5%

0% 2% 4% 6% 8% 10% 12% 14% 16% 18%

Availability Managem ent

SLM

Application P rovisioning


D R /BC P

OS Provisioning

Software Updates

IT Cost Managem ent

Software Patching

Change Management

Incident/Problem Management

Configuration Managemen t

Capacity Management

Problem Management


2006

2008

In 2008, enterprises are reporting that when it comes to managing virtualization, almost nothing is

easier than they thought is was in 2006, but everything is harder. While many of the changes in the individual disciplines are within margin of error for both studies, the overall trend is statistically signicant,and some specic disciplines have showed major changes.

In 2006, for example, only 5% of enterprises believed that security management became harder in a virtual environment. In 2008, that has more than tripled to 16%, and EMA believes that is still under-representing the difculties. Virtualization security has only just started to be explored, and over the

coming 12-24 months will become a signicant area of interest for enterprises and vendors alike. EMA will investigate this area in more detail in upcoming research reports.

Software patching is another discipline where the percentage of enterprises rating it as more difcult has changed signicantly. In2008, only 6% of enterprises thought this discipline was harder in

a virtual environment than a physical one; in 2008 that has almostdoubled to 11%. EMA again believes this under-represents theproblems. Patching in a virtual environment is precarious at best.Stopped or paused images are still difcult if not impossible to

patch, especially using standard patch tools and mechanisms. Asenterprises continue to face the multiple layers of complexity, thischallenge becomes even greater.

In 2008, enterprises are

reporting that when it comes to managing virtualization,almost nothing is easier thanthey thought is was in 2006,

but everything is harder.



Page


IT cost management is the other discipline that is rated signicantly harder in 2008. In 2006 only 5%of enterprises considered this ITIL discipline to be harder in a virtual environment; in 2008 that hasmore than doubled to 11%. Tools for capacity measurement and chargeback are critical in a virtual

environment to measure, allocate, and manage costs. Similarly, tools for asset and inventory (including license) management, and conguration management are critical to reduce or avoid the costs of virtualmachine sprawl.

When looking at the disciplines that enterprises believe become easier under virtualization, almost allof the changes are negative, and almost all of them are statistically signicant.

Change management and software distribution are the two disciplines that face the biggest difference(26%) between 2006 and 2008. In 2006, 55% of all enterprises considered change management to be

easier in a virtual environment; in 2008, that has plummeted to only 29%. Similarly, the percentageof enterprises rating software distribution as easier has dropped from 58% in 2006 to 32% in 2008. Application provisioning also suffered, dropping 18% from 61% of enterprises in 2006, to 43% in2008. Enterprises are clearly realizing that the dynamic nature of virtualization is not only a ben-

et, but can be a signicant management headache as well. The rapid provisioning, de-provisioning,updates, and other software change mechanisms are abstracted from management tools and processesby the additional virtualization layers, and traditional management solutions are often unable to deal with this abstraction. For effective software distribution and change management, enterprises need

management solutions that truly understand this abstraction, and can deal with the added complexity of a virtual environment.

Availability management has also had a signicant change in this measure, dropping 21% from 71% of enterprises in 2006, to just 50% of enterprises in 2008. Enterprises are discovering that the manage-ment and monitoring software that comes with the common virtualization platforms is not enough

to meet the business or technical goals of virtualization. Virtual environments instead need com-prehensive and sophisticated performance monitoring tools that understand the whole environment

– physical and virtual – and that can track, analyze, and prevent problems across the end-to-end ITservice infrastructure. While such solutions are available, they are few and far between, and still do not

generally accommodate all the layers of complexity in the virtualization landscape.

Security administration faces a drop of 18% of enterprises that consider it to be easier in a virtual

environment – from 42% in 2006 to 24% in 2008. This corresponds with the increase in enterprisesthat consider it to be harder.

Only operating system provisioning was rated as easier by moreenterprises in 2008 than it was in 2006. This is partially due to thefocus among the major management vendors on providing bet-ter workload management and OS provisioning tools specically

designed for virtualization. It is also due to the work done by the virtualization vendors themselves in promoting automated provi-sioning solutions. Nevertheless, the difference is quite small, and it

is conspicuous as the only discipline that appears to have becomeeasier. Vendors must do more here, and especially in taking thegains from OS provisioning and applying them also to applicationprovisioning, software distribution, and change management.

When looking at the disciplines that enterprises

believe become easier under virtualization, almost all

o the changes are negative,and almost all o them are

statistically signicant.



Page


It is important to note that these changes in perception are despite the fact that the fundamental needsof virtualization management have not changed in the last two years. It is also despite the swathe of new tools for managing virtual environments that have been released since 2006, and the much better

availability of information and education about the requirements for virtual system management.

This then is not a result of actual changes in the manageability of virtual systems. It is far more

likely to be the result of the increasing number of organizations deploying virtualization – including many organizations that are not exceedingly well prepared for it – and a growing realization of thereal difculties of managing virtual systems. In this respect,

these outcomes are hardly surprising – and EMA expectsthis realization to continue. Virtual environments, as part of a larger enterprise management scenario, introduce signi-cant difculties that are not yet resolved in comprehensive,

repeatable, and effective ways. This is changing with thegradual education of managers, technicians, and end users,

as well as with the increasing availability and sophisticationof management tools, but it is not changing fast enough.

Enterprises will see management difculties getting worse,before they get better.

The Growing Pain Of Virtualization Skills

Do you believe you h ave sufficient skills in your

enterprise today to manage the virtualized systems?

31 %

43 %

21 %

4%

1%

43 %

35 %

20 %

0%

2%

0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% 45% 50%

Yes, definitely

Yes, probably

No, probably not

No, definitely not

Don’t know

2006

2008

In 2006, substantially more enterprises than today thought that they had the right skills to handle their virtualization deployments. 18 months later, many are realizing the truth. Whereas in 2006, 43% of enterprises condently responded that they denitely had the right skills to manage their virtual systems,in 2008 only 31% have the same condence. Many of these have shifted to a more circumspect view,and the proportion of enterprises who think they probably have enough skills has changed more or

less in proportion, from 35% in 2006 to 43% in 2008. The difference – plus a small number of those

Virtual environments, as part o a larger enterprise

management scenario,introduce signicant

difculties that are not yet resolved in comprehensive,

repeatable, and eective ways.



Page


who in 2006 did not know – have moved to the “denitely not”camp, which in 2006 was non-existent, but in 2008 represents 4%of enterprises. Those who understand that they probably do not

have the right skills remains approximately unchanged, moving only from 20% to 21% from 2006 to 2008.

EMA expects this chart to continue to change through 2010 andbeyond, and specically to slip more toward “no” than “yes.” Theirrational exuberance in virtualization is not limited to the markets

– it has also affected enterprises’ own internal evaluations of theirability to deploy and manage virtualization. As virtualization deployments continue to grow, there willbe continued pressure on skills. Demand will increase, and skilled people will become correspondingly harder to nd externally. Add to this the increasing complexity of the virtualization deployments, and

the corresponding need for more advanced and comprehensive skills, and this will become even worse inthe coming few years. As more sophisticated management technologies come into the market, this pres-

sure will be alleviated somewhat, but this will not be enough to offset the rising volume and complexity of virtualization deployments. EMA expects the virtualization skills shortage to rise steeply and cause

signicant pain for enterprise IT. It may well reach crisis level before advanced automation and bettermanagement tools successfully address the multiple layers of complexity in a majority of enterprises.

EMA PerspectiveKey Outcome – Treat Virtualization as a Strategy, not a ProjectMany major ndings in this research relate to the key drivers, outcomes, and barriers to success for virtualization in the enterprise. These are all intricately related, and must be considered in concert, notjust individually.

This is why EMA has for some time recommended enterprises view virtualization as a strategy, nota project. Virtualization should be about the whole business, not just about IT, and about a range of long-term benets, not just (or even) short-term savings. For example, once a server consolidation

project is complete, the enterprise is left with a half-empty data center and a sunk cost in virtualizationtechnologies and skills, and probably a lot of leftover dormant servers – not necessarily the best pos-sible outcome. Enterprises need to consider up front how to leverage that investment to make theentire business better for the long run, not just how to nish a shortsighted, albeit highly valuable,

server consolidation project.

This research strongly reinforces the need to take this strategic approach. For example, as noted above,

in 93% of all enterprises, virtualization is effectively addressing more than just one objective. In overhalf of all enterprises, it is achieving ve or more. In as many as 10% of all enterprises, it is achiev -ing 10 or 11 of these objectives simultaneously. This highlights the limited value of engaging with

virtualization as a project, with a single goal. Clearly there are many different objectives that are achiev-able with a broader view.

Perhaps as importantly, in a disturbingly large number or enterprises virtualization fails to fully meetexpectations (even if only marginally). Beyond some one-off gains, like server consolidation andhardware cost reduction, relying on a limited virtualization project with a narrow objective is more

In 2006, substantially more enterprises than today thought

that they had the right skills to handle their virtualizationdeployments. 18 months later,many are realizing the truth.



Page


likely to result in unmet expectations. Also, with many different barriers to success being evident evenin a single organization, an inability to overcome just one of these barriers can lead to a complete virtualization failure, if there are not other areas to fall back on. By contrast, taking a truly strategic

approach to virtualization makes it far more likely to be a success. More drivers can be satised with astrategic deployment, more outcomes can be achieved with broader implementation, and if individualbarriers prevent achievement in one area, success is still possible in others. Looking at virtualization as

a strategy – with a wide range of use cases and outcomes – will end up with a great deal of payback,nancially and otherwise, as it achieves in signicant ways across ve, ten, or even more differentobjectives, to at least some degree.

Key Outcome – Prepare for Multiple Layers of Complexity Another major nding from this research is around the multiple layers of complexity – and the man-agement difculties they cause. This research has discussed in detail the three most important layers

of complexity – the ‘virtualization triple-threat’ of multiple virtualization platforms, technologies, and vendors – but also highlights many other layers of complexity, including:

Multiple use cases – showing that virtualization is not justfor testing anymore

Multiple virtualization drivers and outcomes – busting the

myth that virtualization is just for server consolidation

Multiple barriers to adoption and success – such aspolitics, skills, cost, and other issues

Multiple and separate IT management teams – including existing teams and specialists

Multiple skill requirements – and the difculties enterprises

face in lling them

Multiple management disciplines – with the growing understanding of how hard virtualization management really is

Multiple licensing and support models – especially for applications, but also for operating systems, and management technologies

Multiple different management tools – and how far away they are from delivering comprehensive virtualization management

Enterprises must be better prepared to deal with these layers of complexity, and management software

vendors clearly need to do a better job of helping them.

Key Outcome – Adapt to the Changing Virtualization Landscape

The nal major outcome from this research is the dramatic changes that are occurring, in reality as wellas in perception. The multiple layers of complexity are actually becoming more signicant, as moreand more enterprises embark on virtualization across more technologies, more platforms, and more vendors – not to mention all the other layers of complexity considered in this research. Virtualization

continues to grow strongly across all of these layers. The workloads that enterprises are deploying virtualization for are also changing, and again they are all growing. Deployment of virtualization has

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

Key Outcomes: • reat Virtualization as a

Strategy, not a Project • Prepare or Multiple

Layers o Complexity • Adapt to the Changing

Virtualization Landscape



Page


not decreased for any single workload since 2006, and among the most important increases are mis-sion-critical production environments – application servers, database servers, middleware, and others.Drivers are changing too – if only marginally – as enterprises react to the availability of new products

and capabilities in virtualization, and as the education and marketing processes of major vendors tellmore specic stories about virtualization and its key outcomes. Enterprises need to be prepared for theconsequences of all these changes.

One key consequence of the extraordinary growth of platforms, technologies, vendors, use cases, workloads, drivers, and more is the growing possibility of a skills crisis in virtualization, and the

effect that crisis could have. Human factors continue to be the biggest issues in virtualization, frombeing the most important barriers to virtualization, to the relatively poor showing in virtualizationmanagement skills. Virtualization skills will continue to be difcult and costly to nd, develop, andmaintain, and other human factors will continue to be the most important issues in virtualization suc-

cess. For unprepared enterprises, they will continue to hurt their ability to achieve strategic objectives,drive up virtualization costs, increase the likelihood of important errors and other failures affecting

business users, and reduce the real and perceived value of virtualization. This is especially true inlight of the substantial (although possibly unrealized) expansion in the deployment of virtualization

technologies that directly affect end users – especially desktop virtualization – and the added exposureand increased importance any virtualization problems take on when end users are directly affected. Addressing the possible skills crisis will require immediate action on the part of enterprises – to

improve their skills primarily through internal development; and from vendors, to drive even harder atdelivering software solutions that embed intelligence, automate processes, and integrate with broadermanagement mechanisms.

This immediate action is needed because in the face of the changing skill requirements, managementof virtualization is not getting any easier. Fundamentally it is not getting any harder, but across theboard enterprises are realizing that virtualization management is difcult (as it always has been), and

adjusting their perceptions to come closer to reality. As EMA predicted back in 2006, security contin-ues to be a major concern, and over the coming 12-24 months will be among the most important areasfor development of people, processes, and technologies in virtualization management. However othermanagement disciplines will remain critical, and clearly enterprises are understanding the increased dif-

culty virtualization brings in managing areas like patching, software distribution, change, performanceand availability, conguration, and perhaps most important, IT costs.



Page 8


Conclusion There are many other outcomes in this report of signicant consequence, but these three key ndingsrepresent the most importance challenges of enterprise virtualization today. Enterprises are gaining

major benets from virtualization, and it does live up to its hype in so many different ways – fromproject objectives to strategic objectives, from cost reduction to improved agility, from IT benets todirect end-user benets.

However, this report shows that these outcomes do not come without any pain, and without any consequence. There are signicant difculties, the most important of which are the need to work on virtualization as a strategy, not a project; dealing with the multiple layers of complexity; and handling

the rapid rate of change and the problems that creates.

Enterprises will need to take decisive steps to shore up their defenses against these challenges, and

vendors must help them to do so. There are some ne technology solutions available today, but none will solve all the problems. It is perhaps axiomatic to note that even as better, more diverse, more com-prehensive, and more integrated technology solutions are developed, they will still not overcome allthese challenges. As ever, enterprises must direct their energies at a three-pronged approach, including

not just technology, but also people and process. The sooner they are able to do so, the sooner they canovercome the difculties of recent virtualization and management trends, and position themselves toachieve success as the future actuates and extends these virtualization and management forecasts.



Page


Appendix A: Virtualization Definitions and Taxonomy The landscape of virtualization is a mineeld of semantic differences. To help navigate through this

difcult space, EMA has produced a taxonomy of virtualization. Much of this taxonomy was origi-nally published in the groundbreaking EMA 2006 research paper, Virtualization: Exposing The Intangible

Enterprise ( http://www.enterprisemanagement.com/research/ema_product.php?product=5000_1147 ) –

a seminal report that substantially dened virtualization and its many manifestations for an entire indus-try. EMA has updated this taxonomy to accommodate recent changes in virtualization technology.

Virtualization A technique for abstracting (or hiding) the physical characteristics of computing resources from the way in which other systems, applications, or end users interact with those resources. This includes mak-ing a single physical resource (such as a server, an operating system, an application, or storage device)

appear to function as multiple logical resources; or it can include making multiple physical resources(such as storage devices or servers) appear as a single logical resource.

Hypervisor A relatively small software (or rmware) component that enables multiple ‘guest’ operating systems todynamically share the resources of an underlying ‘host’ system, by allocating resources and providing an interface for all low-level compute requests (e.g., for CPU, memory, disk or network I/O, etc). A

hypervisor can run directly on top of bare hardware to provide a server virtualization environment,or on top of a fully functioning operating system to provide an OS virtualization environment. Alsoknown as a Virtual Machine Monitor or Manager (VMM). In common usage these terms are inter-

changeable, even though technically they provide different functions..

Hardware Virtualization A method of running multiple guest operating environments directly on top of base hardware, allocat-

ing fully discrete physical hardware resources (CPU, memory, I/O channels, etc,) separately to eachguest, without requiring a complete host operating system. Typically used in older and larger serversystems, but also recently adapted at chip-level for micro-level x86 environments, this method uses a

single enclosure to house essentially isolated compute hardware components, which are not shared by any of the guest operating environments.

Server Virtualization A method of running multiple guest operating environments directly on top of base hardware, sharing ne-grained resources (CPU, memory, etc.), without requiring a complete host operating system. Thismethod of virtualization runs standard operating systems such as Windows, UNIX, or Linux on top

of a hypervisor that is installed directly onto a bare system. While this is most commonly used forserver environments, it is equally capable of hosting desktop environments. Also known as hardware

emulation or as native, platform, system, or “Type 1” virtualization.

Paravirtualization A type of server virtualization where the guest OS makes some specic system requests (or ‘hyper-calls’) intentionally to the hypervisor, rather than to the base hardware (to be intercepted and translated

by the hypervisor). Hypercalls are typically made for resources that are difcult, impossible, or unsafe





Page 0


to virtualize (such as network and storage I/O calls, or privileged operations like updating page tables).Paravirtualization requires guest operating systems to be modied (paravirtualized or ‘enlightened’) with specic hypervisor-aware drivers, so that they are aware of this unique environment.

Operating System (OS) Virtualization A method of running multiple logical (or virtual) operating systems (or “guests”) on top of a fully

functioning base (or “host”) operating system. This method of virtualization usually uses a standardoperating system such as Windows, UNIX, or Linux as the host, plus a hypervisor, to run multipleguest operating systems. Sometimes referred to as “Type 2” virtualization.

Application Virtualization A method of providing an individual application to an end user without needing to completely install

this application on the user’s local system. Unlike traditional client-server operations, the applicationitself is not necessarily designed to be used by multiple users at one time, and indeed is unlikely to beshared in the same way. Each user has their own, fully functional application environment, with few or

no components actually being shared with other users.

Application Isolation A method of installing and/or executing application software on a local desktop in a way that it

does not interact with other system and application components, settings, and congurations on thatdesktop. Typically, isolated applications do not use the same system environment settings and loca-tions – Windows registry, Dynamic Link Library (DLL) folders, etc. – so while they appear to run asa standard application in the end user environment, they are effectively separated from the rest of the

environment, and run in their own ‘sandbox’. Application isolation is essentially a subset of application virtualization.

Software Streaming A method of delivering software components – including applications, desktops, and even completeoperating systems – dynamically and incrementally from a central location to an end-user over the

network. In this model (unlike traditional software delivery) the software component is not delivered asa single block or le, but rather is repackaged for incremental delivery as a stream of data. This allowsthe software to be used at the destination even before delivery has been completed, and in most casesjust seconds after it has started (similar to video streaming such as from YouTube.com). Typically, the

most important ‘core’ functions will be available for use immediately, with less important or rarely used components downloaded only as required. Streaming is essentially a subset of other virtualizationtechnologies (desktop, application).

Server-Based (or Remote) Desktop Virtualization

A method of providing a complete compute environment (with an independent OS, applications, data,etc. – a logical or virtual ‘desktop’) to an end user, which runs on a remote system and is delivered

to the user across a network. In this model, the local device (PC, laptop, or thin client) sends all userinput (keystrokes, mouse clicks, etc.) across the network to the remote server; the server processes theactivity, and then sends the resulting user interface back across the network to the user.



Page


Client-Based (or Local) Desktop Virtualization A method of providing a complete compute environment (with an independent OS, applications, data,etc. – a logical or virtual ‘desktop’) to an end user, which runs on the local system, generally on top

of a standard local operating system. In this model – which is essentially an end-user implementationof OS virtualization – the virtual desktop typically runs in a window on the physical desktop, muchlike any other application, although it may or may not allow user-level interaction with the underlying operating system.

Storage Virtualization A method of providing access to data storage without needing to dene to systems and applications

where the storage is physically located or managed. For example, a single large disk may be partitionedinto smaller, logical disks that each user can access as though it were a single network drive; or anumber of disks may be aggregated to present a single storage interface to end users and applications. Typically storage virtualization applies to larger SAN or NAS arrays, but it is just as accurately applied

to the logical partitioning of a local desktop hard drive.

Network Virtualization A method of abstracting ne-grained network services, resources, or components from the systems,applications, and network subsystems that utilize or communicate with those components. For exam-ple, Network Address Translation abstracts the ‘real’ IP address of an endpoint (such as a desktop

in a local area network) from the ‘virtual’ IP address that appears to an external network (such as theInternet) communicating with that endpoint. Similarly, a virtual private network (VPN) establishes aprivate, mostly encrypted network layer that is essentially hidden from the public network over whichit travels (often the Internet).

Data Virtualization

A method of abstracting the source of individual data items – including entire les, database contents,document metadata, messaging information, and more – from the systems and applications that areusing them. Typically this is achieved by providing a single common data access layer for many differ-ent data access methods – such as SQL, XML, JDBC, File access, MQ, JMS, etc. This common dataaccess layer interprets calls from any application using a single protocol, and translates the application

request to the specic protocols required to store and retrieve data from any supported data storagemethod. This allows applications to access data with a single methodology, regardless of how or wherethe data is actually stored.

Clustering A method of making several local area network attached physical systems appear to systems and appli-

cations as a single processing resource. This differs signicantly from other virtualization technologies,

which normally do the opposite, i.e., make a single physical system appear as multiple independentoperating environments. A typical use case for clustering is to group a number of identical physicalservers to provide distributed processing power for high-volume applications; or as a ‘Web farm’, a

collection of Web servers that can all handle large loads for Web-based applications.



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Grid Computing A method of making several wide area network attached physical systems appear to systems andapplications as a single processing resource. Like a cluster, a grid abstracts multiple physical servers

from the applications running on them, but the physical systems in a grid are normally spread out overa wide network (such as the Internet), and the physical servers that comprise a grid do not have to beidentical. Indeed, a grid is typically made up of heterogeneous systems, in diverse locations, each of which may specialize in a particular processing capability.

Software-As-A-Service (SaaS) A software application delivery model whereby an external third party (service provider, software ven-

dor) provides end users with application functionality from a remote location, typically delivered overthe Internet using a standard Web browser as the user interface. SaaS users will rarely install any othersoftware locally (excepting in some cases lightweight plug-ins – Java Runtime or ActiveX – or limitedclient-side agents), and do not own the software itself. Payment (where it is required) is typically only

for the rights to use the service, not for a software package or any code.

Thin Client A local end-user hardware device with a screen and human interfaces (keyboard, mouse, etc.) thathas limited or no independent processing, storage, or peripherals of its own, relying substantially ona remote system for virtually all operations. Typically, a thin client will have limited local processing

that allows it to merely send and receive I/O to/from a central server, which hosts the operating system, desktop, and applications (i.e., used in conjunction with Server-Based, or Remote, Desktop Virtualization).



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Appendix B: Methodology and DemographicsFor this research, EMA invited over 35,000 pre-qualied IT professionals to complete an extensive

Web-based survey crafted independently by EMA expert analysts, consisting of almost 240 specicdata points in total. Respondents were further qualied based on their response to three specicquestions:

Are you responsible for buying, managing, or operating virtualization solutions in yourorganization?

Do you have a working knowledge of virtualization solutions in your organization?

Do you have virtualization solutions implemented, or are you implementing them within thenext 12 months?

Respondents that answered “No” to any of these questions were rejected. This means that all respon-dents (in addition to being independently pre-qualied through the initial invitation process) self-iden-tied as being active participants with a working knowledge of a current or imminent virtualization

deployment. In fact, most respondents (75%) have a current virtualization implementation, and themajority (59%) has had a virtualization implementation for over 12 months, while a small minority (11%) is planning a virtualization implementation over the coming 12 months, as seen below.

W hich of the following best describes the current status of your com pany’s

Virtualization implementation?

11 %

15 %

16 %

59 %

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70%

Implementing Virtualizat ion

within the next 12 months

Curre ntly implementing

Virtualization

Have had one or moreVirtualization solutions

implemented for less than 12

months

Have had one or more

Virtualization solutions

implemented for 12 months

or more

•

•

•



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In total, this survey netted 627 valid responses, over two-thirds of which came from the independentcontact base owned by EMA, with the rest being additional respondents from a contact base suppliedby the report sponsors. Any anomalies (including outliers identied as resulting from using sponsors’

contacts) were identied using statistical analysis and excluded from this report, resulting in the 627 valid responses. Statistical analysis reveals the resulting data has a condence interval of 95%. Sponsorshad no other direct involvement in or inuence on the survey creation or execution, nor in any of the

subsequent evaluation and analysis of the results.

Respondents were:

Primarily decision makers (38%), evaluators (33%), and recommenders (26%)

From many industries, including nancial and insurance services (14%), manufacturing (11%),

healthcare (10%), education (8%), and government (7%)

Primarily headquartered in North America (87%), but with signicant operations in Europe-Middle East-Africa (46%), Asia-Pacic (40%), and Latin America (35%)

Working in Infrastructure Operations and Planning (32%), IT Architecture (20%), Data CenterOperations (16%), and Network Operations (10%)

Companies that the respondents work for included:

Many large enterprises with over 20,000 employees (28%), but also a signicant proportion of

small and medium businesses with up to 150 employees (37%), and mid to large enterprisesbetween 1500 and 20,000 employees (36%)

Companies with various revenues, from less than $20m (18%) to over $1b (34%), and also from

government and non-prot agencies (8%)

•

•

•

•

•

•



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Detailed demographics can be seen in the gures below.

W hich group do you belong to? (Response shown only for 83% of respondents who

indicated they worked in IT/IS/Network department )

1%

4%

5%

6%

8%

8%

30 %

32 %

6%

0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35%

Security

Serv ice De sk , Serv ice

Suppor t , He lp Desk

Applicat ions Development

Operat ions – Network

Opera t ions Center (NOC )

Other (Ple ase specify)

IT Financial Management

Operat ions – Data Center

Infrastructure O perat ions

and Planning

IT Architecture

W hat is your pr imary role in the purchasing decisions for Virtualization solutions?

1%

2%

26 %

38 %

33 %

0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40%

None of the above

Budget provider

Recommender

Technical evaluator

Decision maker



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For which of the following IT technologies or initiatives do you

have direct involvement in or a working know ledge?

32 %

39 %

40 %

47 %

50 %

52 %

57 %

57 %

68 %

73 %

88 %

44 %

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

Configuration Management Database (CMDB)

IT Service Management ( ITSM)/SLM/BSM/Service Catalog

IT Governance/Risk/Compliance Management

IT Asset Manageme nt/Financial Management

Serv ice Desk /He lp Desk

Change and Configuration Manageme nt

Applications Manageme nt

Network M anagement

Security

Storage

Systems Manageme nt

Virtualization

For IT-related issues in your organization, which of

the following a ctivities are you involved in?

1%

28 %

73 %

83 %

85 %

76 %

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90%

None of the above

Financial decision maker

Te chnical decision maker

Determine need

Evaluate products/services

Recommend and specify

products/services



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Q6_1 W hich of the following best desc ribes your company’s primary industry?

14 %

11 %

10 %

7%

6%

5%

5%

5%

4%

4%

4%3%

8%

Finance/Banking/ Insurance

Manufactur ing – Al l Other (Not Computer or NetworkingRelated)

Heal thcare/Medical /Pharmaceut i ca l

Educat ion

Government

High Technology - Resel ler /VAR/Systems Integrator

Retai l /W holesale/Dis tr ibut ion

Professional Services/Consult ing - Computer or Networking Related

High Technology - Appl icat ion/Internet/Managed/NetworkService Provider

High Technology - Software

Other (P lease speci f y)

Telecommunicat ions

Manufactur ing - Computer Hardware or NetworkingRelated

In which region are you located?

2%

2%

7%

88 %

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

Asia-Pacific (APAC)

Cen tral & South America

(Latin America)

Europe -Middle East-Africa

(EMEA)

North America



Page 8


In which regions does your company operate? Select all that apply.

21 %

35 %

40 %

91 %

46 %

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

Re st of World

Ce ntral & South America

(Latin America)

Asia-Pacific (APAC)

Europe -Middle E ast-Africa

(EMEA)

North America

How many employees are in your company worldwide?

15 %

7%

9%

15 %

12 %

9%

28 %

6%

0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30%

Less than 250

250 - 499

500 - 999

1,000 - 1,499

1,500 - 4,999

5,000 - 9,999

10,000 - 19,999

20,000 or more



Page


W hat is your organization's annual revenue?

4%

5%

9%

21 %

34 %

8%

6%

13 %

0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40%

Less than $1 M il lion

$1 Mil l ion to unde r $5 Mil l ion

$5 Mil l ion to unde r $20 Mil l ion

$20 Mil l ion to under $100

Mill ion

$100 Mil l ion to under $1

Billion

$1 Bil l ion or more

N/A (govt/non-profit)

Don’ t know

How many desktops (or equivalents e.g. thin clients) does your organization support?

16 %

9%

10 %

15 %

11 %

8%

21 %

9%

0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25%

Less than 250

250 - 499

500 - 999

1,000 - 1,499

1,500 - 4,999

5,000 - 9,999

10,000 - 19,999

20,000 or more



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How many physical servers in total do you have in all your data cen ter(s)?

6%

7%

12 %

12 %

14 %

9%

7%

21 %

12 %

0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25%

Less than 10

10 - 19

20 - 49

50 - 99

100 - 199

200 - 499

500 - 999

1,000 - 1,999

2,000 or more



Documents

DORA EMA Virtualization Trands Forecasts Recommendations