Gartner says virtualisation is on track for 55% growth this year

"The EMEA market is expected to be a significant driver of worldwide growth," comments Rene Millman, senior research analyst at Gartner. "Echoing global drivers of virtualisation software, growth will be led by cost reduction, resource utilisation and management advantages," he adds. Gartner reckons that as hypervisor functionality moves to hardware, most of the growth will be in server virtualisation management, which will increase 54.3% to reach €244.8 by 2009. It also insists that the emerging EMEA hosted virtual desktop (HVD) software market stands at more than €12 million in 2008 and will grow 335.7% to €56.2 million this year, driven priarily by corporate adoption. Interestingly, Gartner says that the UK, Germany and France have the biggest markets in terms of adoption of virtualised platforms. Indeed, the UK alone accounted for 23% of revenue, with Germany taking up 22% and France, 16% in 2008. Western Europe, dominated by the UK, Germany and France, accounted for about 89% of EMEA revenues last year and is on track to reach €451 million in annual revenue this year.