The rapid emergence of multicore architectures and virtualization technologies is significantly restricting worldwide x86 server shipments, and dramatically changing x86-based server deployment patterns, according to Framingham, MA-based market research firm IDC.

As a result, the firm believes that multicore and virtualization will cost the x86 market more than 4.5 million shipments and $2.4 billion in customer spending between 2006 and 2010 with overall x86 shipments that were once projected to increase 61 percent by 2010, now facing just 39 percent growth during that same period.

“The server market is at a crossroads and customer buying behavior is increasingly driven by the strategic business benefit of the IT investment rather than a singular focus on cost containment,” noted Matt Eastwood, program VP for IDC’s enterprise platforms group, in a statement.

“In today's business environment, it is clear that technologies such as virtualization and multicore are particularly important enablers for the consolidated IT infrastructure IT organizations are increasingly seeking to deploy,” he said.

Further, Michelle Bailey, research VP for IDC’s enterprise platforms and datacenter trends pointed out, “Each of these technologies is impactful to the market in their own right. However, the use of multi-core technology in conjunction with server virtualization tools has a compounding impact on server configurations, and accelerates the ability of IT organizations to exploit the benefits of multi-core technology.”

“Unlike other previous multicore introductions that took time to become mainstream as customers changed their application code, virtualization allows customers to fully exploit the improvements in x86 processors immediately, accelerating business benefits and thereby increasing adoption rates,” she continued.

Looking forward, IDC believes server and component vendors will optimize around quad-core technology before moving ahead to octi-core technology.

Also, the firm predicts server revenue growth rates will be lower in comparison, but are reduced to a lesser extent than shipment growth rates as customers deploy more richly configured systems in terms of memory, disk, and I/O to balance the increase in processing and server utilization.

And despite the decline in the number of physical shipments, over the forecast period, growth in the number of effective processors continues to climb at a 25 percent annual rate due to multi-core technology advances.

Finally, IDC says the number of virtual servers will rise at a CAGR of 40.6 percent during 2005 to 2010 so that by the end of the forecast period, more than 1.7 million physical servers will be shipped for virtualization activities resulting in 7.9 million logical servers, representing 14.6 percent of all physical servers in 2010 compared to just 4.5 percent of server shipments in 2005.

By: DocMemory
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