After 10 years, in 2008, virtualization is finally starting to mature in most people's eyes.  Despite all of the efforts made and additional intelligence added into the technology, it sounds like server consolidation is still the main reason people are interested in and actually implementing the technology. 

According to Security Watch, a recent research study carried out by Storage Expo on 362 companies found that the main objective for implementing virtualization was sever consolidation ( 62%) closely followed by new management capabilities (30%), while a small percentage of respondents (6%) rated availability as an objective.  Only 2% of those surveyed said they had no plans to implement virtualization.

John Abbott, Chief Analyst, The 451 Group sums up Virtualization as “proving to be a catalyst for introducing or revitalizing related technologies. It is easier to move virtual resources around a datacenter (or multiple datacenters) in response to demand, to deploy new resources more rapidly, and to redeploy them once they are no longer required. And it is also easier than in the past to integrate surrounding tools (such as monitoring, billing and chargeback) with virtualized resources.”