Worldwide Survey of VMware Customers Finds Cost Savings and Business Continuity as Top Priorities
42% of Customers Worldwide Adopting Virtualization as Default Build for Datacenter – from 25% in 2007; Customers Also Cite Manageability and Intent to Increase Number of Virtualized Business-critical Applications as Key Driver of Virtualization
CANNES, France, February 25, 2009 — Today at VMworld Europe 2009, VMware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW), the global leader in virtualization solutions from the desktop to the datacenter, announced the results of its annual worldwide customer survey1 that found that business continuity has risen in importance to be the most common reason why its customers deployed the industry-leading VMware platform, surpassing server consolidation, which yields substantial capital and operational cost savings. In addition, more customers are choosing to run their business-critical applications in virtual machines.
“Customers tell us they need to do more with less, and these survey results make it clear that they count on us to make that possible,” said Raghu Raghuram, vice president, server business unit, VMware. “Business continuity is a perfect example. High availability and disaster recovery were prohibitively expensive for many organizations when the only solution was a massive hardware investment. With VMware’s ability to pool resources, reduce hardware spend, and automate essential management tasks, business continuity is within reach for many organizations.”
Customers that rely on VMware products often achieve dramatic cost savings by reducing power consumption, hardware procurement, cabling, datacenter floor space, and the manpower required for systems management. VMware’s innovative technology allows customers to realize these benefits while helping to ensure superior application performance.
While business continuity and server consolidation were the top two responses, receiving 45 percent and 40 percent of all responses respectively; customers also cited they are focusing on deploying the VMware platform for improved manageability (30 percent) and the intent to increase the number of virtualized business-critical applications (25 percent).
Customers are increasingly standardizing their datacenters on virtualization technology. More than 42 percent of the survey respondents indicated that they require all new server workloads to be virtualized, as compared with 25 percent a year ago. Moreover, those customers using virtualization technology for their datacenters overwhelmingly turn to VMware for virtualization solutions. More than 84 percent of customers consider VMware to be their “first choice” when deploying new virtualized server workloads.
Virtualization Deployments are Mature; Objectives are Wide-Ranging
The web-based survey of 1,038 VMware customers from North America (US and Canada), Europe (UK, Germany, and France) and Asia-Pacific (Australia, India, China, Japan) also found that the size and the maturity of virtualization deployments is growing. Ninety-two percent of ESX production customers surveyed are running more than 10 virtual machines, while 55 percent are running over 50 virtual machines and 36 percent are running 100 or more virtual machines. In addition, 84 percent of respondents have deployed VMware vCenter Server (formerly known as Virtual Center) in production environments to simplify and automate infrastructure management, and 67 percent are using VMotion to help maintain high availability in their live production environments.
According to the survey, conducted by Management Insights of Southborough, Mass, customers are using the VMware platform for many purposes, and the range of uses is expanding continuously. Virtualization is now a core component of enterprise IT strategies with 98 percent of respondents stating they are satisfied with the industry-leading VMware ESX hypervisor, 94 percent are satisfied with VMware as a company and 61 percent of customers state they have VMware-exclusive virtualization policies.
Customers are virtualizing a wide variety of enterprise Windows and Linux applications, including SAP and Lotus Notes. Among the most commonly virtualized Microsoft applications are Dynamics GP (also known as Great Plains), Exchange, SharePoint, SQL Server, and custom-written NET-based applications. Commonly virtualized Oracle solutions include PeopleSoft, custom WebLogic-based applications, and Oracle database systems.
Many Benefits of Desktop Virtualization
While the survey focused on datacenter virtualization, respondents familiar with desktop virtualization were also asked to describe their virtualized desktop environments. The most common reason given for implementing desktop virtualization was remote access, with companies leveraging VMware View to help boost employee productivity and improve data accessibility. The second most common response was centralized desktop deployment, which can reduce management and administration costs, increase application and data security, and enable employees to access rich, personalized desktops from almost any PC or mobile device.
“Corporate IT departments have been wrestling with desktop management for over 20 years, and virtualization gives them a much needed solution,” said Jocelyn Goldfein, vice president and general manager of VMware’s Desktop Business Unit. “The list of IT headaches related to desktops is varied, including patch management, security compliance and challenges of onsite installation and repair. Virtualization addresses these concerns by centralizing desktop management and data storage, and allowing a single administrator to be more efficient while delivering higher service levels to the end users.”
For more details about the survey, please visit www.vmware.com/go/globalcustomersurvey.
[1] Source: Comprehensive survey of 1038 VMware customers conducted worldwide in July-August 2008, a subset of which use ESX in production (N=676: 376 North America, 186 EMEA, 114 AP). (Where 2007 data is reported, survey conducted July 2007, who use ESX in production (N=561). http://www.mgtinsight.com/
About VMware
VMware (NYSE: VMW) is the global leader in virtualization solutions from the desktop to the datacenter. Customers of all sizes rely on VMware to reduce capital and operating expenses, ensure business continuity, strengthen security and go green. With 2008 revenues of $1.9 billion, more than 130,000 customers and more than 22,000 partners, VMware is one of the fastest growing public software companies. Headquartered in Palo Alto, California, VMware is majority owned by EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC). For more information, visit www.vmware.com.
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Statements made in this press release which are not statements of historical fact are forward-looking statements and are subject to the safe harbor provisions created by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such forward-looking statements relate, but are not limited, to ongoing development and delivery of innovative new products and continuing customer adoption and deployment of virtualization technologies, including our products. Actual results could differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements as a result of certain risk factors, including but not limited to: (i) current uncertainty in global economic conditions that pose a risk to the overall economy as consumers and businesses may defer purchases in response to tighter credit and negative financial news, which could negatively affect product demand; (ii) further adverse changes in general economic or market conditions; (iii) delays or reductions in consumer or information technology spending; (iv) competitive factors, including but not limited to pricing pressures, industry consolidation, entry of new competitors into the virtualization market, and new product and marketing initiatives by our competitors; (v) our customers’ ability to develop, and to transition to, new products, (vi) the uncertainty of customer acceptance of emerging technology; (vii) rapid technological and market changes in virtualization software; (viii) changes to product development timelines;(ix) our ability to protect our proprietary technology; (x) our ability to attract and retain highly qualified employees; and (xi) fluctuating currency exchange rates. These forward looking statements are based on current expectations and are subject to uncertainties and changes in condition, significance, value and effect as well as other risks detailed in documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2008, which could cause actual results to vary from expectations. VMware disclaims any obligation to update any such forward-looking statements after the date of this release.