This week in Las Vegas, Gartner's VP Distinguished Analyst Thomas Bittman delivered the keynote address at the 27th annual Gartner Data Center Conference. And as expected, one of the hot topics of discussion was server virtualization.

Bittman stated that only two or three years ago, server virtualization was mostly being used for test and development purposes. But now, the technology is being accepted into production environments to the tune of about 70 percent of all datacenters using virtual machines in some sort of production role.

Bittman also announced three remarkable predictions about the virtualization industry:

• By 2012, at least 14 percent of the infrastructure and operations architecture of Fortune 1000 companies will be managed and delivered much like a cloud-computing provider, internally. These "private clouds" are essentially flexible computing networks designed to be like the solutions being offered by public providers such as Google and Amazon.

• Between 2007 and 2011, Bittman expects that the installed base of virtual machines will grow more than tenfold.

• And by 2012, he believes that the majority of x86 server workloads will be running within a virtual machine.

When talking about this hot virtualization technology, Bittman adds, "our key advice is to look beyond simple consolidation and cost savings. Virtualization can be the catalyst to drive many fundamental important changes in architectures, processes, and cultures. Even if short-term attention needs to be given to cost-savings, make sure you build a foundation that can be leveraged in a few years. Virtualization 'unlocks' cloud computing potential internally and externally."

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