Quoting from Express Computer:

Commoditisation of the x86 market and the need to consolidate will catapult the Indian server market to the second position in the Asia Pacific this year, says Akhtar Pasha.

2006 will be the year of virtualisation

Major server consolidation was noticed in 2005, and the market is not short of examples. Aviva Life Insurance has done physical (for all applications) and virtual server (at DR site) consolidation using IBM 8-way x445 and x446 servers. Sanyo has gone for physical server consolidation using IBM’s BladeCentre HS20 that runs SAP applications and Microsoft Exchange. Karvy Consultants, which has deployed multiple applications and an SQL server, has gone in for consolidation using HP 4640 (4-way) and 8-way servers. Eureka Forbes, India Oxygen, Oil India, indiatimes, Sify, and Reliance Infocomm have also gone in for blade server consolidation using HP servers.

CIOs/IT heads who have delayed virtualising their x86-based servers for fears that the technology is still unproven should put that project at the top of their to-do lists for 2006 as the market for virtualising low-volume systems heats up. It’s a combination of various factors—the x86 platform becoming powerful, and customers finding a growing list of applications appropriate for a virtualised environment. In the last couple of years, server vendors have increased the performance of their low-end systems with dual-core processors and a 64-bit extension. This year will bring servers with virtualisation technology built into the silicon itself—a huge step for the x86 platform.

“2005 saw a lot of enterprises dabbling with virtualisation in HPC, EDA, core banking and the like, particularly for server consolidation and cost-savings,” observes Talukdar. “What is surprising is the speed at which virtualisation has moved into production environments.”

IDC says the shift to x86-based server virtualisation is underway, and expects widespread adoption to take place during the next couple of years. Companies lacking a virtualisation strategy for low-end systems will pay more in the long run in hardware costs and management headaches, say analysts. They add that x86 servers running a single application have poor server utilisation rates (about 20-25 percent). Using virtualisation to consolidate workloads into a single box should increase utilisation significantly.

Server management tools help end-users to easily move and copy virtual servers, providing a simple approach to disaster recovery and high availability. But advanced capabilities—such as a faster and seamless migration of virtual servers among physical systems—are likely to come in the months ahead.

Read the entire article, here.