Virtualization: Real Trouble for Servers?

BusinessWeekがついに仮想化について取り上げた。サーバー・ベンダーやIntelやAMDに追い風が吹いている。450万台のサーバー需要と2010年までに24億ドルの売り上げを生むらしい。

But what's good for Sparks and the likes of VMWare could throttle growth in other pockets of the computer industry. Market researcher IDC recently said the trend toward virtualization, along with increased use of chips with multiple processing cores, will cost computer makers $2.4 billion in sales, or more than 4.5 million servers, between now and 2010, as companies do more with less. And IDC slashed its growth forecast for worldwide sales of servers that use chips from Intel (INTC) and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) to 39%, from 61%.

オプションをつけるのでサーバーの単価が上がるのもメリット。ただし現在はいいけど，将来の需要の先食いや，x86サーバーへの移行は他のマシンからの移行を促しているだけという気がする。辛いのはx86以外のアーキテクチャということか・・・

At HP, Paul Miller, vice-president of marketing for industry standard servers and blade systems, says virtualization is raising the average price of its x86 servers as customers add features to more efficiently run groups of programs on fewer machines. That's offsetting slower sales of the servers. "They're loading them up with memory, drives, and software?all of the elements that from HP's standpoint drive a larger sale," says Miller. "We're bullish on virtualization." Customers using VMware or other virtualization software will account for about 25% of HP's sales of ultra-thin, high-margin blade servers this year, vs. 5% in 2006, says Miller.

記事ではSunのマシンを使ったGMの例も取り上げている