The move to a converged infrastructure - Server and Virtualization Study, Wave 12

Peter ffoulkes, Research Director for Servers and Virtualization at 451 Research's TheInfoPro, spent a bit of time discussing the results of a recent survey, Server and Virtualization Study, Wave 12, his organization had just executed.

I'm not going to make an attempt to review the entire survey although it is full of useful information. To sum up the survey, the majority of organizations have taken steps to move towards a converged infrastructure. This means that they've moved towards a standardized infrastructure, have consolidated virtual workloads on a smaller number of physical hosts and have made strides towards a virtualized infrastructure. The steps of automating that infrastructure and orchestrating its use still remain.

As the transformation of the Data Center continues, a number of suppliers appear to be winning.

• Workloads are increasingly hosted on Windows and Linux. UNIX and single vendor operating systems are losing ground.
• Suppliers offering converged infrastructure systems, such as CISCO and IBM, are seeing increased selection.
• VMware continues to hold the lion's share of organization's investment in virtual machine software regardless of whether they're using Windows or Linux

Unlike some surveys that have passed by my desk, this one appears well thought out and well executed.  Furthermore, Peter went to great effort to make sure that the findings were cast in the appropriate light. He didn't make broad statements that couldn't be backed up by the sample. It was a very refreshing experience. Furthermore, the model of virtualization used is very similar to the Kusnetzky Group model of Virtualization which made the discussion quite comprehensive.

I'd suggest reaching out to TheInfoPro to learn more about the survey and their findings.