Nexenta is proud to announce the results of its Server Hypervisor Market Share Survey. This survey was fielded in May and June 2012, and was sent to a panel of 4000 storage customers, community members and developers.

Summary

When asked to select all the server hypervisors they used today, respondents said that 79.4% used VMware. When asked to choose the primary server hypervisors, 69.3% of respondents said they were using VMware.  Other hypervisors being primarily used today by respondents were Citrix, KVM and the Hyper-V hypervisors were mentioned, but none polled above 10%.

It appears from the survey that server hypervisor market share is not going to be substantially different 12 months from now. VMware remained the dominant hypervisor, at 78.4% when respondents were offered multiple choices. When asked to choose the primary server hypervisors in 12 months from now, 66.8% of respondents named VMware.

The survey shows what many instinctively know: VMware is the platform to beat when it comes to server hypervisors. While it is well within the margin, the study does say VMware faces a threat from the numerous competitors it faces.

The survey was fielded in May and June of 2012, and has a margin of error of +/- 6%.

Note: The figures do not add up to 100%, since more than one option could be chosen. It shows the dominance of VMware, but shows that KVM, Hyper-V and Citrix are also in use. Also, its clear many sites using hypervisor virtualization are using more than one virtualization platform.

In this chart, VMware's market lead is clear, with about 30% of the market divided up nearly equally between KVM, Hyper-V, Citrix and lesser known virtualization platforms like VirtualBox.

Note: The figures do not add up to 100%, since more than one option could be chosen. This chart shows that not much is likely to change in companies that use multiple hypervisors in the coming 12 months. While some small changes occur, they are all in the margin of error.

This chart shows that in relative terms, KVM and Citrix do apprear to pick up market share, but the differences are still within the margin of error.