Top Ten Predictions for Infrastructure Software in 2006

IDC: 2006 promises to be a challenging year for operating and managing computing infrastructure resources. IDC's top ten predictions for infrastructure software highlight key drivers, trends, and industry events that IDC believes will shape this market in 2006.

Software vendors and end-users alike will be faced with important decisions, driven by changes that include the spread of virtualization, volume shipment of multi-core chip technologies, and the increased demand for IT process improvements to better support the business. IDC's top ten predictions provides a set of guideposts to key market trends in 2006.

IDC predicts virtualization will continue to be a strong market driver in 2006, spreading on Intel platforms at an almost explosive rate, spearheaded by software offerings from VMware, Microsoft, XEN, and SWsoft. As vendors rush to improve their virtualization offerings, they must make it a priority to explain the benefits of virtualization in user environments, as well as the potential to build on today’s benefits and enable resource sharing and automation.

Multicore chip-based Intel architecture systems are predicted to dominate volume hardware shipments in the second half of the year. However, adoption of system software and system management software that fully supports multicore will happen less rapidly, given the hesitancy of customers to absorb change. Customers will be concerned about disrupting existing installations, adding operational costs, and adding to the workload of maintaining compliance with auditing standards that may be in use, making it challenging for vendors.

Virtualization and Multicore Systems are just two of the key predictions topics discussed in the new study, IDC’s Top 10 System Infrastructure Software Predictions for 2006

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