The penetration of virtualization technologies is still low, but that only means it has room to grow. By 2014, according to a new report from Citrix, virtualization will dominate IT enterprise savings — and thus the agendas of CIOs. Citrix surveyed more than 700 CIOs from around the world and found that virtualization has led to IT cost savings of 16 percent, and they expect it to hit 27 percent in 2014.

While 31percent of CIOs estimate that 5 percent of their IT budgets or less are dedicated to virtualization technologies, 26 percent of them expect virtualization to account for a quarter of their IT budgets in 2014. The UK is leading the adoption of virtualization, with 27 percent of CIOs rolling out desktop virtualization over the next year and 41 percent planning to extend their use of server virtualization. In the United States, server virtualization adoption is currently only 17 percent.

Interestingly, 36 percent of IT departments are evaluating desktop virtualization, and 28 percent are conducting some form of trial of server virtualization. Twelve percent of the companies surveyed don’t have any virtualization in place, and 62.5 percent are planning to implement a server virtualization project within the next 18 months — during which time 33.4 percent are planning to implement a desktop implementation project.

What does this mean for IT solution providers?

There is plenty of action coming around server virtualization. CIOs not only see the value but are allocating budget and formulating plans for the next year, 18 months and four years. There is nothing but opportunity on the horizon — as long as you develop and execute a marketing plan focused on generating demand effectively and cultivating leads over the implementation timeframe.

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[Source: Citrix]