Server virtualisation is becoming "firmly entrenched" in large European organisations, industry experts have reported today.

A new study by IDC's European Systems and Infrastructure Research Group found that adoption of the technology is expanding at a "significant rate".

"Virtual server technology has been a feature of IT systems for a very long time, having started in the mainframe data centre as a way to create logical partitions within a large computing resource so that each partition could run a specific workload without interfering with the others," said Nathaniel Martinez, programme manager at IDC.

"However, faced with mounting pressure to constantly deliver new applications at a lower cost, more rapidly and with a higher level of availability, enterprise data centres naturally turn to server virtualisation to optimise IT resources."

The IDC study reveals a widespread adoption of server virtualisation spanning x86 and non-x86 server environments.

On average, seven per cent of installed servers for this sample were virtualised, and respondents reported that 69 per cent of servers purchased in the past 12 months were virtualised.

The research goes on to note that enterprises expect 49 per cent of new servers purchased next year to be virtualised.

According to IDC, the services industry is showing the highest propensity to rely on the technology.

In terms of operating systems, Linux represents the most likely target for virtualisation closely followed by Windows.

"Virtualisation is already impacting European server sales," said Thomas Meyer, vice president of IDC's European Systems and Infrastructure Solutions group.

"According to data from IDC's European Quarterly Server Tracker, over the past six quarters there has been a steady decline in the growth rates of worldwide x86 shipments.

"While typical year-over-year shipment growth rates averaged 20 to 25 per cent in previous years, during 2006 this growth slowed to single digits.

"In the fourth quarter of 2006, Western European x86 server shipment growth was only 1.8 per cent over the same period a year ago."