Virtualisation growing pains

This blog continues feedback and experiences from VMworld Europe 2008 in Cannes, France.

While some industry pundits are keen to talk about immaturity in the European virtualisation market, VMware CEO Diane Greene herself – in a Q&A session with the press – said that Europe is an established IT market with its own proven model for delivery that works well.

I spoke to Nimsoft VP EMEA Tim Bisley on this subject and this is what he told me, “Whilst European companies may lack experience in virtualisation, this does not necessarily translate into immaturity. They recognise the dangers of replacing server sprawl with virtualisation sprawl. As such, they are more likely to adopt a more considered approach when developing their virtualisation strategies. Indeed, this sort of thinking is second nature to European organisations, many of whom have pioneered best practices, such as ITIL and other methodologies. They may even learn from the mistakes made by US companies and incorporate these valuable lessons into their own virtualisation strategies.”

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Other exhibitors did seem to echo the feeling that the market is still experiencing growing pains. “We’re building a distribution network for our VMware systems intelligence product here in Europe from scratch,” said Nicola (Nick) Sanna, President and CEO of Netuitive. “This doesn’t mean that it’s all necessarily immature here though, large corporations like banks that are accustomed to operating on a global basis are certainly ready. But the rest of the market us possibly more focused on virtualisation for testing and development at this stage – in a sense they are still playing with this technology.”

The story continues tomorrow...