Server virtualization will dominate in 2010

Server virtualization will be a big priority in 2010 with businesses moving their pilots into production. By Rajendra Chaudhary

A server refresh cycle is coming [in 2010] if it's not already here, spurred by virtualization. We feel that the medium to large enterprises server installed base has aged and floor space of DC reduced. A new infrastructure is needed to handle the workloads [especially 4p/8p racks and blade servers] to reduce costs. We therefore believe that virtualization will be a cornerstone technology as medium and large enterprises accelerate the need for more dynamic and converged infrastructure designed to support the business needs of the next economic cycle.

Speak to a CIO long enough and you come up assured that the topic [server virtualization] will (invariably) during the conversation. Such is their interest in the technology. We think that server virtualization has become one of the biggest trends in 2009-10, particularly as the recession led many firms to look to do more with less. It is a tipping point. It reflects the longer term trend that IT heads are becoming more engaged in server virtualization projects than in the past.

Virtualization has been sold on the benefits of increased utilization of resources, reduced space, power and cooling, reducing the TCO and increasing the ROI of servers, improving IT agility and reducing provisioning time. Our experience with CIOs shows that these are the top benefits reported by users who have virtualized servers.

Fewer VMs in production environments

While the Indian market saw over a dozen cases of server virtualization projects in 2009, yet for some reason the uptake of server virtualization, despite the awareness and CIO interest, hasn't quite been the same here in India as in other geographies. Many businesses are still doing pilots with non-critical workloads.

However, Ganesh Mahabala, Regional Director, VMware India & SAARC believed that Indian organizations are just applying a logical approach to the adoption of server virtualization. "The adoption cycle for any technology goes through three stages viz. explore, expand and standardize. The majority of Indian companies are currently at the explore stage where they are familiarizing themselves with the technology and the associated management challenges," said Mahabala. He continued one must realize that server virtualization is lot more complex than simply putting a piece of software on a server and creating a bunch of virtual machines. Server virtualization drastically changes the dynamics of enterprise computing and CIOs have to account for issues such as provisioning, security, integration of physical and virtual infrastructure, which mandate an effective change management process. Things like these take some time and that's why the adoption curve is a bit on the lower side.

Take the case of Kotak Bank for example. When Ramesh Lakshminarayanan, CIO noticed a poor rate of server utilization, he first piloted server virtualization in Kotak Securities, [bank's stock broking arm]. Simultaneously he sought the approval of the management, the IT and business users and other stakeholders. After a thorough evaluation of virtualization technology, he began migrating production modules to virtual machines.

Pallavi Kathuria, Director, Server Business Group, Microsoft India cites prohibitive cost as one of the major inhibitors preventing the deployment of server virtualization in live production environments referring to VMware’s solution. Kathuria said, "Doing a pilot does not attract much cost but a commercial deployment would require considerable upfront costs for acquiring the necessary infrastructure for virtualization. Additionally lack of support from vendors, interoperability between physical and virtual environments, contributed to the slow adoption rate."

Server virtualization project to go up in 2010

Kathuria said CIOs that up until now tried the technology in their test environments will now get the backing from their managements to try it out in live environments.

Subram Natarajan, Executive IT Consultant-STG, IBM India / South Asia said that the server virtualization market has matured to a great deal and it is one of the reasons why there will be a significant increase in the number of instances of virtual machines in 2010. "I've seen organizations, albeit a few, run their ERP, CRM, messaging and other critical application on virtual machines and we expect such instances to grow at a faster rate in 2010. We will see larger organizations which have been risk averse up until now take server virtualization to the next level in 2010 and beyond," said Natarajan.

One of the country's most renowned manufacturers of craftsmen products and industrial specialty chemicals is currently planning to do just that [the spokesperson refused to be quoted]. The company is planning to move some modules of its ERP application on to virtual machines. Having run some non-critical applications such as the file systems and the messaging applications on virtual machines previously, the IT head at the company said that a lot of other organizations are also contemplating similar initiatives.

According to Rajesh Dhar, Director Industry Standard Servers, Hewlett Packard India, virtualization if deployed correctly can help customers maximize their ROI and going forward production environments will continue to be one area where we will see increased adoption.

Competition in virtualization to benefit customers

The current bullish attitude of user organizations towards virtualization could also mean plenty of opportunities for the vendors in different categories as they jostle for space in what is becoming an increasingly crowded space. This means that there would plenty of technology choices for customers (VMware, Microsoft, Citrix, Oracle, Red Hat, Novell), which could break the entry-price barrier for virtualization projects. Microsoft is already emerged as a fairly credible challenger to the reining champion VMware. According to some reports it is doing especially well in the SMB space with its comparatively low-cost offerings. The server virtualization management market at present is said to be wide open. As the management market matures, virtualization infrastructure vendors like IBM, HP, BMC Software, CA, and others are busy developing more virtualization management capabilities for the days ahead.

A case in point is HP's recently launched Blade System Matrix, which brings together end-to-end virtualization of server, storage and network resources in the data center under a common management tool.

Similarly VMware has also been devoting considerable resources towards improving its offerings in the wake of future growth opportunities and increased competition. For instance, in its bid to alleviate the security concerns of user organizations with regards to virtualized infrastructure, it has opened up an API called VMsafe in its flagship offering for all the security vendors to write security software at the hypervisor layer. The company is also trying to expand its reach through alliances with SIs and partnerships with vendors such as IBM, Sun, HP, Dell, all of whom carry VMware in their portfolio.

In a bid to drive interoperability between heterogeneous virtual environments—a major CIO concern, Microsoft is working with several partners and has inked pacts with Citrix, Sun, Novell and Red Hat.

Back on the user-end, even after fully understanding the technology and the benefits of a virtualized infrastructure, CIOs are often in doubt about when is the right time to take the plunge. Natarajan said that working on VMs in no different than standalone physical machines. In fact, VMs offer the users several added advantages that a physical machine can't and hence any environment where there are multiple applications being hosted is fit for virtualization.

Making a rather emphatic concluding statement, Natarajan said, “Server virtualization is real, ubiquitous and it's facing enterprises. It helps organizations lower costs and improve asset utilization while reducing management hassles and complexity. These are all attributes that enterprises can benefit from in the current economic reality. So the question shouldn't be why server virtualization but rather why not?”

Such is the optimism and excitement in the market and we expect to see a lot of server virtualization projects in 2010.

rajendra.c@expressindia.com