The virtualisation software and services market in Asia/Pacific will grow at an estimated CAGR of 42 per cent to reach $US1.35 billion by 2010 as CIO interest in the technology steadily increases, according to Springboard Research. Virtualisation services, expected to grow to $US1 billion by 2010, will form the major portion of this market as organisations will spend up to three times as much on services as on software.

According to the research, 50 per cent of CIOs want to deploy virtualisation solutions over the next 18-24 months to address issues like low system capacity utilisation, poor performance and other challenges associated with managing growing IT infrastructure. These findings are based on a survey of CIOs from large and mid-sized enterprises in Australia, China, India, and Singapore.

"Our research indicates that virtualisation, at least at the server level, is becoming an imperative and that a growing number of companies will implement virtualisation at the server level in 2008," said Michael Barnes, a vice president of Springboard Research. "The complex nature of engagements with vendors and SIs while implementing virtualisation solutions is a prime reason for virtualisation services taking a larger share of the market", Barnes added.

While there is some understanding among Asian CIOs of the benefits offered by virtualisation, many organisations are unsure how to approach its implementation. Additionally, many CIOs view virtualisation technologies as immature and feel that implementing the technology could introduce new management and security challenges. Virtualisation is also primarily viewed from a technical perspective and most CIOs do not link virtualisation to solving business problems.

"There is clearly a need for more customer education on the benefits of virtualisation, followed by education on different approaches to successfully incorporating virtualisation into the IT environment," said Ravi Shekhar Pandey, senior analyst at Springboard. "Sharing case studies of successful deployments alongside direct linking of virtualisation with ROI and business benefits is a key imperative from the vendor side", Pandey added.

Len Rust is publisher of The Rust Report.