VARs must push virtualisation adoption up to the next level

Resellers should focus on upselling as more European businesses move to a virtual environment

Next step: More companies are caning their physical datacentres and switching to virtualisation.

Virtualisation adoption in Europe is on the increase, according to a recent report from analyst IDC, placing resellers in a prime position to up-sell with application management equipment.

The report found that businesses are adopting virtualised servers at a rapid pace ­ 35 per cent of servers purchased in 2007 were virtualised. That proportion is expected to rise to 52 per cent this year.

Although virtualisation is being embraced, businesses now face the challenge of managing their virtual environment more effectively, IDC concluded.

Niall McGrane, director of security and virtualisation at software distributor Magirus UK, agreed with the report’s findings.

“There are plenty of vendors that want to play in this space because it is definitely growing in the UK,” he said. “There are lots of benefits to virtualisation, but when customers take the plunge they will realise that there are many challenges too.

“Different tools do different things so Magirus works with its partners to find out what its customers want. A consultancy-led partnership gives the customer and the partner a better fit.”

Jane Rimmer, director of EMEA business development at vendor Vizioncore, a partner of Magirus, said: “Customers have gone beyond server consolidation now. They are looking at the next step ­ where virtualisation goes from here.”

Vizioncore recently unveiled Charter Pro, a monitoring tool for VMware environments, which supplies IT departments with metrics and intelligent alerts on performance across the entire infrastructure.

“With virtualisation there is a great deal of value-add opportunity for resellers. It is not just about selling the software but also the server, storage and networking hardware,” Rimmer added.

“Intelligent monitoring software will also tell a customer when they are short on resources such as CPU, memory or storage, which gives the reseller a great opportunity for repeat business.”
Rimmer explained that as with most aspects of virtualisation there is also a consultancy opportunity around these kinds of monitoring and management solutions.

“Resellers are playing the all-important trusted adviser role and helping to implement these technologies and perform the vital knowledge transfer is a great opportunity, not only to drive revenues, but also to build closer relationships with their customers,” she added.

Self-learning performance management software vendor Netuitive offers a solution that teaches itself the normal operating behaviour of the network, instead of containing pre-defined polices and rules to trigger alarms.

For example, the solution understands that email traffic will be higher on Monday morning as employees log on. In turn, it creates adaptive behaviour profiles for ESX servers, virtual machines (VMs)
and applications.

Nicola Sanna, chief executive of Netuitive, said: “Behaviour learning technologies are becoming a necessity for businesses as traditional policy-based tools are not scaling in these dynamic environments. It is humanly impossible as the alternative is to track end users’ behaviour annually.

“Management is the next step on the virtualisation journey and resellers can take advantage of the wide customer base that has already adopted virtualisation by adding to the offering and up-selling in that market.”

After partnering with distributor Magirus in May this year to extend its presence in Europe, Netuitive is experiencing the growth highlighted by IDC’s report.

Robin Jackson, European sales director at Netuitive, said: “There are big opportunities for this market in the UK as the technology helps customers move their key applications out of testing and development and into production.”
While Microsoft is making a push for market share later in 2008, according to IDC, VMware is in the right place with its focus on busi-ness continuity and virtualisation management.

Matt Piercy, channel director for Northern Europe at VMware, said: “A hugely successful eco-system has built up and a lot of these are bringing complementary functionality to our offerings. The opportunity for the channel is not just around the core technology but also the hardware, software and services that can be delivered on top of that.”

“Virtualisation cuts across organisational silos so a reseller gets to speak to more individuals or teams and build bigger deals. If the reseller can sell monitoring or management software for virtual infrastructure there is also a fair chance there will be opportunities for hardware sales and consultancy revenues as they build out their deployments.”