Useful Virtualization Statistics, Trends, and Best Practices

Virtualization has changed the face of IT operations over the last decade, and it’s continuing to evolve. As digital transformation becomes a bigger priority in your organization, consider the following virtualization statistics, trends, and best practices.

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Virtualization statistics

• Server virtualization forecast: According to Statista, the global server virtualization market is forecast to grow from around seven billion U.S. dollars in 2020 to around 10 billion U.S. dollars by 2026.
• App abundance: According to Spiceworks, application virtualization is expected to experience the most growth among virtualization technologies with adoption expected to grow to 56 percent by 2021.
• Budget boost: Three-quarters of senior executives say projections for cost savings after virtualization implementation have been fully realized, and 70 percent say virtualization has had a significant impact on efficiency and cost savings.

Virtualization trends

• Lead change: Software as a Service (SaaS) will overtake enterprise-based apps as users and organizations grow more comfortable storing data in the cloud than on personal devices.
• Favorable shift: Virtual storage area network technologies will become more effective and low-cost, making it easier for enterprises to move virtual machines from one server to another.
• Desktop assistance: Amazon’s Workspaces and VMware’s Horizon DaaS will accelerate demand for virtual desktop infrastructure deployments.
• Budgeting tools: More companies will turn to chargeback and metering tools to gain greater visibility into virtualized resource utilization, hoping to improve cost control and workload mapping.

Virtualization best practices

• Choose wisely: You don’t want to virtualize every application, especially if it won’t save your organization money. Older, smaller apps may work best, as opposed to those with heavy traffic demands.
• Fully explore what you’re getting into: Before committing, assess storage requirements, backup and recovery support, the number of virtualized guests you can migrate to a host, and so on.
• Don’t take security for granted: Many virtual systems aren’t patched or they’re patched late. And needed patches and security signatures can be too easily removed, even unintentionally.

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Editor’s note: This article was updated in 2022 with formatting corrections and more recent statistics.