Global virtualisation penetration is on pace to reach 20 per cent in 2009 from 12 per cent in 2008. Its adoption within the information technology (IT) organisation is driven by the need to reduce the total cost of ownership (TCO), enhance the agility and speed of deployment of IT needs and minimise carbon footprint

The virtualisation market, as defined by research firm Gartner, includes server virtualisation management, server virtualisation infrastructure and hosted virtual desktops (HVDs).

An HVD is a full, thick-client user environment (operating system and applications) run as a virtual machine on a server and accessed remotely through a window on a remote device.

Key source of growth

Gartner estimates that revenue from HVDs will more than triple from US$74.1 million to US$298.6 million in 2009 while revenue from server virtualisation management software will increase 42 per cent from US$913.9 million in 2008 to US$1.3 billion in 2009. Revenue from server virtualisation infrastructure will grow 22.5 per cent from US$917 million in 2008 to US$1.1 billion in 2009.