(8-Jul-11) According to Gartner, the number of virtualization workloads is set to grow fivefold by 2015, and the market no longer belongs solely to VMware.
In a Magic Quadrant report published last week, the analyst firm for the first time rated two other vendors as "leaders" in virtualization. Citrix's XenServer and Microsoft's Hyper-V have joined VMware in the top-right quadrant, though both lag way behind it in market share.
So what's changed from a year ago, when VMware had the leader space all to itself? The Gartner report notes that Microsoft increased its share among mid-market users new to virtualization, while Citrix is leveraging both desktop virtualization and its free offering.
Citrix attributes its new recognition to a change in rating criteria. "Gartner has expanded the scope of the report, and I think that benefits us," said Derek Slayton, senior director of product management at Citrix, in an interview. As well as desktop virtualization, he notes Citrix's strength in the cloud, another area that differs from the traditional data center server virtualization.