Technology markets are changing fast. This brief is essential reading for infrastructure vendors to identify the key forces shaping prospects in their businesses. Datamonitor outlines key trends, explaining how this is shaping our research agenda for 2007, and highlighting the pertinence of our 2007 research to your business targets for the year.

Scope

Defines the limitations of the physical IT infrastructure and the impact of virtualization technologies on these shortcomings. Estimates the present adoption levels of virtualized IT infrastructures. Predicts the implications of virtualized IT infrastructure on external IT budget spending patterns in the medium and long term.

Highlights

Current IT infrastructure is based predominantly on physical resources, and therefore is inherently non-scalable. Virtualization, broadly defined as the abstraction of resources through hiding physical characteristics, has the potential to transform IT infrastructure and associated IT spending patterns. Examining the Technology Trends 2006 survey results, the brief concludes that the reduction in proportion of external IT budgets spent on hardware is not pronounced enough to suggest the widespread adoption of virtualization technologies. Taking into consideration the current level of adoption of virtualization and comparable technologies, Datamonitor expresses reservation about the medium-term impact of virtualization. The proportion of external IT budgets allocated to hardware will decline, but the precipitous drop is unlikely to occur before the end of 2008.

Reasons to Purchase

Align you business development road-map with the changing trends in external IT budget spending. Evaluate market opportunities created by the next generation of IT infrastructure through knowledge of its impact on external IT budget composition. Tune your market offering by understanding enterprises' medium-term IT spending strategies.