About 17.7% of all new servers shipped in EMEA in the fourth quarter of 2009 were virtualised, an increase from 16.31% in the same period a year ago, according to research and advisory firm IDC.
According to IDC’s EMEA Quarterly Server Virtualization Tracker, actual shipments rose year over year for the first time since 4Q08, rising 2.8% to 110,000 physical servers. EMEA virtualisation software revenue also increased for the first time in year, recording 3.9% growth year on year in 4Q09 to $158m. Virtualization licenses distributed grew year on year by 8.54% to 158,000.
The firm said that EMEA server virtualisation market continues to shift towards the use of paid hypervisors, with paid virtualisation software running on 71.7% of all new server hardware shipments virtualised in 4Q09 compared to the 60.7% recorded in 4Q08.
For the full 2009, 355,000 virtualised servers and 485,000 virtualisation software licenses were shipped, representing a decline of 14.4% and 8.2%, respectively.
Geographically, Western Europe leads in terms of mainstream adoption of server virtualisation technology, with 20.2% of new servers shipped in 4Q09 virtualised compared to 19.3% a year ago. However, the CEMA region is also increasing rapidly with 11.02% of new servers shipped in the region virtualised compared to 8.3% in the same period a year ago.
Among vendors, HP gained the top spot for EMEA new server shipments virtualised, with 50% market share. HP’s shipments increased 12% year over year and 23% sequentially. Dell remained in the second position, with virtualised server shipments growing 33.3% over 3Q09, while IBM gained third position, with 15% market share and 51% sequential growth, driven by a solid performance from its converged System p and x86-based servers.
VMware continues to hold the number one spot for virtualisation platforms, while Microsoft virtualisation license shipments rose by 37.7% year over year overall, with Hyper-V showing strong momentum at 254% annual growth. Citrix XenServer showed the largest increase, growing 355% year over year, while Parallels Virtuozzo rounds out the top five with license shipments declining by 0.4% year over year.
Nathaniel Martinez, program director of IDC EMEA Systems and Infrastructure Solutions, said: In the fourth quarter of 2009, IDC observed a number of signs of an upturn in the server virtualisation marketplace.
The availability of CPU upgrades and corporate mandates for their IT infrastructure to go ‘virtual’ prompted many organisations to initiate long delayed technology refreshes.”
