Enterprises Enable Many Capabilities In Private Cloud Deployment This bar chart shows which server virtualization or private cloud management capabilities enterprise respondents’ organizations are using in their internal private cloud environment: policy-based automation of virtual machine allocation for routine adjustment: 42%; policy-based automation of virtual machine allocation for initial provisioning: 39%; integrate virtual server and storage management processes: 39%; integrate virtual server

Server virtualization increases utilization, efficiency, and cost optimization. Server virtualization offers proven business advantages by reducing hardware and operational costs through efficient consolidation of multiple workloads onto fewer physical servers. Virtualization accelerates deployment times, allowing organizations to bring new services to market faster. Its ability to scale resources up or down supports dynamic business needs and improves overall agility.

As in the early days of server virtualization, many in the industry thought that a surge of east-west traffic from server virtualization would require non-blocking fabrics, high-bandwidth switches, and advanced routing techniques. But these requirements didn’t materialize for most enterprises. Now, vendors claim AI workloads demand cutting-edge networking to handle massive data flows and distributed training, yet there is little supporting data from AI providers validating this.

Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware has become a catalyst for organizations to reassess their broader private cloud and virtualization strategies. Some companies benefit from VMware’s simplified packaging model; others report VMware licensing increases ranging from several hundred percent to over 1,000%, making financial impact assessments an exec-level concern.

Responses were data center facilities, 37%; managed cloud operations, 35%; server virtualization and/or containers, 34%; security, 33%; servers, 31%; workplace devices (desktop/laptop/mobile), 31%; network, 30%; mainframes, 28%; storage, 28%; service desk, 28%; applications, 27%; disaster recovery, 24%; and backup, 22%. Figure 8 Subscription Storage Is Popular Enterprises adopt subscription-based infrastructure for financial security, capacity considerations, and easy transition (see Figure 9).

Enterprises Enable Many Capabilities In Private Cloud Deployment This bar chart shows which server virtualization or private cloud management capabilities respondents’ organizations are using in their internal private cloud environment. We asked 132 enterprise private cloud decision-makers, “Which of the following server virtualization/private cloud management capabilities on your internal private cloud environment is your organization currently using?”

Forrester’s Business And Technology Services Survey, 2024, shows that services decision-makers at enterprises that work or plan to work with third-party professional services for infrastructure over the next 12 months currently outsource or plan to partially or fully outsource the following over the next 12 months: network services (70%), mainframe operations (66%), server operations (66%), storage (67%), and server virtualization and/or container operations (70%).

Hyperscalers often use open-source variants of server virtualization. Tech leaders typically adopt a “lift and shift” approach to migrate virtualized systems to public cloud instances with minimal changes, prioritizing speed. This is considered “day 1” of cloud usage, often leading to performance and cost challenges due to differences between on-premises and cloud platforms. While this path is quick, it may require modernization later.

Server virtualization introduced east-west traffic which forced new protocols to emerge, such as virtual extensible LAN (VXLAN). The proliferation of cloud platforms, microservices, and containers has not yet introduced new protocols, but it has changed some of the ownership aspects of networking.

Pricing transparency is a gap, requiring custom enterprise quotes based on complex factors (e.g., number of users, types of devices, servers, virtual environments, functions enabled on devices). Capabilities. HCLSoftware has broad OS support and discovery functions for a wide swath of mobile devices, endpoints, servers, and Linux distributions. Infrastructure options include hosted cloud SaaS and on-premises models.