Even if it owns the dominant share of the global market on virtualization, software firm VMware said it has nowhere else to go but to extend the market itself.
VMware Philippines country manager Emmanuel Portugal said during a press briefing that while the company has more than 80-percent share of the virtualization market, it is important to note that there is still more room for expansion in so far as the virtualization market is concerned.
“Our option is to increase the pie (market), to go out and spread the word on virtualization,” Portugal said.
VMware recently reported gaining $5.2 billion in total revenue for 2013, up 17 percent year-over-year. With 14,000 employees worldwide, it is ranked as the fifth largest infrastructure software company in the world.
Portugal also shared the results of the latest VMware Cloud Index, which showed that cloud adoption in Asia-Pacific (APAC) region continues to progress and accelerate business transformation.
The study covered 2,785 senior IT practitioners in 12 APAC countries, including emerging markets such as China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, and the Philippines.
Key research findings also showed that flexibility and disaster recovery are important for hybrid cloud in APAC.
Portugal said a shift to Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) has enabled IT operators and distributed application developers to provide new infrastructure without waiting to purchase, ship, and install physical servers within their own data center.
But the problem, he said, is that it may take time and the needed resources for organizations to gain the expertise and investment to deploy and manage cloud infrastructure.
“Particularly in the Philippines, where business operations are often interrupted by unpredictable weather conditions, the need for flexibility and disaster recovery has led to companies exploring hybrid clouds,” Portugal said.
He added that in today’s new era of cloud computing, organizations need to take a holistic approach to planning, building, and operating their IT infrastructure.
“VMware believes the software-defined data center will enable organizations to build infrastructure that is radically simpler and more efficient, while delivering agility and flexibility to support business growth,” Portugal said.
In the emerging markets like the Philippines and Thailand, 92 percent of the respondents surveyed believe their IT organization must act quickly and cost effectively provide cloud services to the business, where fast provisioning and zero downtime is a top priority.
Respondents in mature APAC markets or 27 percent of the respondents said that cloud is highly relevant to their organization, while the majority view in emerging markets or 31 percent of respondents see cloud or “as-a-service” approaches as a top priority.
The study likewise indicated that 65 percent of the respondents agreed that if they do not improve their knowledge of cloud computing and the software-defined data center, IT operators may risk falling behind their peers professionally and that 55 percent in mature markets feel the same way.
