Press release
LONDON and PRAGUE, April 19, 2010 - According to IDC's EMEA Quarterly Server Virtualization Tracker, 17.7% of all new servers shipped in EMEA in the fourth quarter of 2009 (4Q09) were virtualized, an increase from 16.31% in 4Q08. Actual shipments increased year over year for the first time since 4Q08, rising 2.8% to 110,000 physical servers. EMEA virtualization software revenue also increased for the first time in year, recording 3.9% growth year on year in 4Q09 to $158 million. Virtualization licenses distributed grew year on year by 8.54% to 158,000. The EMEA server virtualization market continues to shift towards the use of paid hypervisors, with paid virtualization software now running on 71.7% of all new server hardware shipments virtualized in 4Q09 compared to the 60.7% recorded in 4Q08.
For the full 2009, 355,000 virtualized servers and 485,000 virtualization software licenses were shipped, representing a decline of 14.4% and 8.2%, respectively, on the previous year.
"In the fourth quarter of 2009, IDC observed a number of signs of an upturn in the server virtualization marketplace," said Nathaniel Martinez, program director, IDC EMEA Systems and Infrastructure Solutions. "The availability of CPU upgrades and corporate mandates for their IT infrastructure to go 'virtual' prompted many organizations to initiate long delayed technology refreshes. IDC believes that server virtualization will play a pivotal role in transforming large and medium organizations' hardware infrastructure so that it operates at a level of efficiency that is more in line with the demands of current economic environments in EMEA."
Western Europe clearly continues to lead the way in terms of mainstream adoption of server virtualization technology, with 20.2% of new servers shipped in 4Q09 virtualized compared to 19.3% a year ago. However, the CEMA region is rapidly bucking that trend with 11.02% of new servers shipped in the region virtualized compared to 8.3% to the same quarter a year ago.
"Virtualization adoption is accelerating in CEMA. Organizations in the region have had difficulties raising capital following the economic downturn, and so turn to virtualization to continue expanding their server infrastructure," said Mohamed Hefny, research analyst, Systems and Infrastructure Solutions, IDC CEMA.
Virtualization is Transforming How IT is Consumed and Deployed in EMEA Organizations
"Server virtualization has become the default build for new application deployments, and server refreshes among many European organizations, and this is having a profound impact on IT infrastructure directions. The next step in virtualization adoption will require a reinvention of IT policies and procedures, and continued deployments of automation tools will be key as virtual machine densities rise and customers find themselves facing virtual server sprawl issues," said Martinez.
EMEA New Server Shipments Virtualized Market Standings, by Vendor
Hewlett-Packard held on to the number 1 spot for EMEA new server shipments virtualized, with 50% market share. HP's shipments increased 12% year over year in 4Q09 and 23% sequentially. Dell remains firmly as the number 2 vendor in EMEA, with virtualized server shipments growing 33.3% over 3Q09. IBM remained in third position, with 15% market share. IBM achieved 51% sequential growth, driven by a solid performance from its converged System p and x86-based servers.
EMEA x86 Virtualization License Market Standings, by Virtualization Platform
VMware continues to hold the number 1 spot (VMware ESX) for virtualization platforms despite revenues decreasing 1.8% year over year. It also saw overall virtualization license shipments decline 3% over the same period. Microsoft saw its virtualization license shipments increase 37.7% year over year overall, with Hyper-V showing strong momentum at 254% annual growth,18 months year after its official launch and entrenching it into fourth place. Citrix XenServer showed the largest increase, growing 355% year over year due to the company changing its business model and offering the product free with certain management functionalities. It is a bold seeding strategy that will see market share gains, but will take some time to monetize if it ever does. Parallels Virtuozzo rounds out the top 5 with license shipments declining by 0.4% year over year.
IDC's Server Virtualization Taxonomy
Virtualization licenses represent the amount of virtualization platform shipments for a given vendor in a given quarter. New server shipments virtualized maps the number of virtualization platform shipments that are sold directly by the hardware vendors. Virtualized server revenue represents the hardware revenue of new server shipments virtualized. Virtualization software revenue represents the software revenue associated with virtualization platform sales.
IDC's Europe, Middle East and Africa Quarterly Server Virtualization Tracker is a quantitative tool for analyzing the EMEA server market on a quarterly basis. The Tracker includes quarterly virtualization license shipments, new server shipments virtualized, virtualized server revenue and virtualization software revenue, segmented by region, CPU type, vendor, form factor, sockets, virtualization platform, and primary guest operating system.
