Gartner says virtualization too expensive -- for now

Computerworld Australia - SYDNEY -- Businesses will need to open their wallets if they want to adopt virtualization, a Gartner analyst said Tuesday.

Speaking at Gartner's infrastructure, operations and data center summit here, Thomas Bittman said the number of virtual machines will rise from 500,000 currently in use to 3 million by 2009.

However, he said it will be an expensive exercise for businesses and told IT managers to "stick it out" until the problems with virtualization, including licensing, support and emerging technologies, are ironed out.

"There aren't many good virtualization vendors out there at the moment, and virtualization is still expensive," Bittman said, adding that virtualization will be a free service in the near future.

He said companies should build a strong data center governance strategy to fend off vendors that will begin vying for third-party managerial control of virtualization. "Don't allow VMware, IBM and Microsoft to own your governance, because none of them have been able to totally deliver virtualization yet, and you don't want to be locked in."

Gartner analyst Phil Sargent said virtualization will be part of nearly every aspect of IT by 2015 and recommended that IT managers query vendors now about how they will help their applications work with the new technology.

"Virtualization will bring more consumer client applications into the data center, which needs to be discussed with vendors as well," Sargent said. However, there are still problems with virtualization regarding support and software licensing, he said, "and not everything can be virtualized; this will clear up over the next two to four years."

Power and cooling concerns now in the news will die out with the arrival of specialist technology in 2011, but Bittman said data centers will need to endure until then. "Power and cooling requires densities that current equipment can't handle, [but] you will need to survive a few years before it is resolved," Bittman said.