With increasing costs and space constraints, enterprises are constantly looking at consolidating storage in a cost-effective and efficient manner. The widely talked about concept of 'virtualisation' comes into the picture in such a scenario.

Defining Virtualisation

Springboard states in its research that the virtualisation software and services market in Asia Pacific will grow at an estimated CAGR of 42 percent and will reach $1.35 billion by 2010.

Phillip Sargeant, managing VP, Global Storage Markets, Gartner, says, "People started to think about virtualisation in the open systems space mainly for Unix and Intel-based servers. This happened about three years ago. Virtualisation involves a lot of different technologies and can be looked at from the perspective of either servers, networking or storage, which are all at different maturity levels".

According to Aman Munglani, principal analyst, Global Storage, Gartner, virtualisation is a concept that everyone is talking about; all organisations are interested in finding how to implement it in the existing environment. He says that it is a phenomenon that is restricted mainly to large enterprises from an India perspective.

Bruce Richardson, chief research officer, AMR Research, says, "We started looking closely at what VMware was doing with virtualisation, and we've seen Oracle and Microsoft move into this space too. I think virtualisation has become incredibly attractive in terms of getting the most out of your equipment".

Drivers of Virtualisation

Now that enterprises are embarking on a journey to virtualisation, let us see what is driving their decision and making multiple industry segments in India aggressively adopt this technology.

Munglani informs, "Virtualisation aids better usage of resources, which is an issue that every CIO constantly faces. Earlier, the CIO didn't know how to make optimum use of the available hardware and storage resources".

Bruce Richardson is of the opinion that energy costs account for the second largest cost factor involved in running a datacentre and people around the world are concerned about how they can control energy costs. This will be one of the main drivers for virtualisation.

Naveen Mishra, senior analyst, Server Market, Gartner says, "Early adopters of virtualisation include companies from the telecom, financial services, retail and entertainment sectors. As the technology gains popularity, traditional companies like manufacturing firms and other service firms will also aggressively adopt the technology".

Storage and Server Virtualisation Leading the Market

Storage and server virtualisation seem to be at the forefront of the virtualisation wave. Statistics and research show that these categories are especially gaining traction in India.

"Server virtualisation has really gained traction over the last couple of years particularly in context of products coming from providers like VMware. People have recognised that their utilisation of servers was very low and they are now trying to pump up this utilisation. Virtualisation, which enables the running of multiple images of a server leading to increased utilisation of assets, is therefore being adopted extensively. A good 85 percent of the organisations that I am in touch with are using some type of server virtualisation," says Sargeant.

Munglani is of the opinion that virtualisation is creating a physical layer between the application and the actual storage, hiding the complexity of the storage infrastructure and ultimately, making it look like a large pool of storage data in front of the administrator. He says, "From a green IT perspective, virtualisation counts because it eliminates the need to go and keep buying new hardware thereby, also reducing power consumption and cooling costs".

Roadblocks for CIOs

A lot of CIOs are looking at deploying virtualisation solutions over the next 18-24 months. The road to virtualisation is not an easy one for CIOs as it is dotted with numerous challenges.

Bruce Richardson opines, "One of the challenges of virtualisation is the attachment to servers or the reluctance to give that up. There are a lot of political issues internally surrounding the change. Everybody thinks that their systems are mission critical."

Munglani says, "The licensing factor makes a very big difference in software virtualisation, which impacts the price to quite an extent. This is a major challenge for CIOs and they have to take caution on this front."

Mishra states, "CIOs need to be cautious about choosing the right products from the vast range that is offered to them by various vendors. We'll see more players coming into the virtualisation space in the future".

Benefits of Virtualisation

Though the benefits to be reaped from virtualisation are often debated by enterprises, experts say that the technology carries with it a host of benefits.

Mishra says, "It allows end-users to de-couple their infrastructure, have a better view of it and thereby use it to the optimum. This in turn helps in cost reduction and increases productivity."

Indian Virtualisation Landscape

India is considered by experts as an enthusiastic adopter of innovative technologies. Predictions about the future of virtualisation in the country seem positive. Let's take a look at how the Indian virtualisation landscape is expected to shape up in the years to come.

According to Richardson , many Indian companies have already embarked on the virtualisation path. Almost every Indian company that he has come across is maintaining multiple data centres not only in India but around the world. They are trying to figure out how to get the most out of virtualisation instead of just buying endless racks of CPUs and storage devices.

Natarajan Viswanathan, MD, Hirachi Data Systems, India, says, "Among enterprises, the Indian customers are just about understanding virtualisation. In terms of virtualisation being a full-blown and a must-have kind of a solution, we are about three quarters away."

Mishra concludes, "In the next 2-4 years the Indian market is going to mature to quite an extent and it will be driven by a lot of education programmes and awareness that vendors will create. Once all this takes shape, market statistics and penetration of virtualisation will improve".