Hyper-V going from strength to strength

  • Article

I saw an interesting article this morning regarding how Hyper-V is doing in the virtualization arena.  It was written by IDC, an independent think-tank who has no ties to Microsoft - so hopefully that should stop most people from claiming that the article is nothing more than marketing propaganda.  The article is titled “Virtualization Continues to See Strong Growth in Second Quarter, According to IDC” and you can read it here.

The main points of the article are as follows:

  • Virtualization licence shipments in Q2 of 2008 increased 53% year over year.
  • VMWare holds the largest market share at 44% (combined VMWare ESX and VMWare Server) however Microsoft now holds a market share of 23% (combined Hyper-V and Virtual Server).

When IDC previously reported on this in October 2006, their report stated that Microsoft’s share of the virtualization market was 8.6%.  Which means that since October 2006 till Q2 of 2008, Microsoft’s share has grown substantially.  What has happened in that period to explain such growth?  Well, Hyper-V was released!

This can only be good news for Microsoft because Hyper-V is a great virtualization product that really is worth looking at if you are considering any virtualization technology; if only my anti-MS brother would open his eyes to this fact though…