"On average, we are able to cut 60 to 70 percent of infrastructure requirements through server virtualization and 70 percent upwards of associated management costs."

VMware customer, Brisbane City Council, for example has achieved a 15-to-1 consolidation ratio through virtualization (so for every 15 servers they had on the floor they now have only one.)

But this, Harapin says, is only the beginning. Although businesses may be initially attracted to the immediate cost savings that virtualization offers them, they are often then drawn to the further benefits such as disaster recovery and business continuity.

The drive for VMware's products came from studies that showed that most x86 servers only run at between 5 and 10 percent utilization.

"It's like having a Ferrari and never driving more than 20km an hour. It's sitting there and taking up data centre space and using electricity and costing time and money to manage when it's not being utilized as much as possible," he said.