Chennai, Nov 30 (IANS) The market for virtualization of information technology infrastructure in India has good prospects, says consultancy Frost and Sullivan.
“The overall market for virtualisation in India is still nascent,” said a reach report by Frost and Sullivan.

“It is shaping up to be one of the major trends that is expected to influence the end-to-end infrastructure of an enterprise, namely server, storage, network, application, desktop, and so on,” the report added.

Virtualization refers to the remote manipulation of a computer desktop or server.

According to the firm, server virtualisation is the forerunner in the adoption of the technology, primarily because of the visible benefits of consolidation, reduced operating expenditure and limited impact on user operations.

In 2008, 24.5 percent of servers sold were virtualisation-enabled. This would grow to 60.2 percent by 2015 because of cheaper hypervisor software and improved tools for managing physical and virtual servers, Frost and Sullivan said.

The ability to consolidate disparate infrastructure, increase utilisation levels, and minimise the mounting space and power expenditures are a few of the key drivers for adoption of server virtualisation solutions.

On the other hand, concentrated risk, increased infrastructure complexity, and migration challenges in a virtualised environment are a few of the key restraints for adoption of server virtualisation solution, it added.

“With technology advancement in virtualisation, enterprises are expected to be able to seamlessly migrate to such solutions soon,” said Saumya Upadhyaya, ICT practices analyst at Frost and Sullivan.

Meanwhile, the desktop virtualization market, including hardware, software, licensing, and management tools, is estimated to have been $79.24 million in 2008 and grow 33.31 annually till 2015.

High cost of acquisition and drastic changes to user interface are the main deterrents to adoption of desktop virtualisation, Frost and Sullivan said.