HP has begun shipping the HP StorageWorks SAN Virtualization Services Platform (SVSP). This is a network-based storage virtualization system that can migrate and manage data between midrange arrays in different SAN environments.

The SVSP pools capacity across heterogeneous storage hardware from HP and other hardware vendors. It provides users with storage services, such as online data migration, thin provisioning, and replication—including clones, snapshots, synchronous local mirroring, and asynchronous remote mirroring for disaster recovery.

"This is a storage virtualization platform for customers experiencing a proliferation of midrange storage arrays", explained HP officials.

The virtualization technology is based on a partnership with LSI. LSI's virtualization platform is the Storage Virtualization Manager, that provides virtual volume management in different environments.

With a number of searches in 2004 close to zero, the word virtualization has become one of the fast growing search term within the last 4 years. Its peak is in the 3rd quarter of this year. The top search markets where Internet users search on keyword "virtualization" are: India, Singapore, United States, Canada, Australia, Sweden, Finland, Netherlands, Italy, United Kingdom.

"Virtualization" is a very broad search term which is not necessarily to refer to VPS hosting.The search term "VPS Hosting" itself also attracted consumers attention in the beginning of the 3rd quarter of 2005. The markets where consumers are mot interested of "VPS Hosting" are: Indonesia, Malaysia, Russia, India, Singapore, New Zealand, Australia, Netherlands, United Kingdom, Canada.

Unlike key phrase "VPS Hosting" that is used mostly in developing markets such as Indonesia, Malaysia, Russia, India, etc., the search term "virtualization" is used mainly from users on the world's most competitive IT markets - Singapore, United States, Canada, Australia, Sweden, Finland, Netherlands, Italy, United Kingdom. India naturally tops the chart as it has a very fast growing IT sector.

Search term "paravirtualization" appears as important in search trends. "Paravirtualization" is a virtualization method that presents a software interface to Virtual Machines which is similar but not identical to that of the physical server or personal computer.

"OS Virtualization" has also become a relatively popular keyword since 2nd quarter of 2006.

Virtualization - Fast Growing Market

Industry analysts predict that the web hosting industry is moving to cloud-based services and this is one of the key factors to boost the development of virtualization technologies. As efficiency is a key to success on todays web hosting market, most web hosting service providers need to best automate their IT infrastructure.

VMWare To Dominate The Virtualization and VPS Market

According to Parallels Chairman and SEO Serguei Beloussov as the virtualization market matures, "VMware will be positioned as an OS vendor and may release more general OS APIs". He expects VMware to compete Microsoft, and the Windows producer would respond by spending more to develop virtualization technologies.

Hyper-V To Grow, But Slowly

The Windows Server Virtualization known as Hyper-V will grow with slower than many expect. According to industry analysts Microsoft must find solutions on issues such as the lack of core features, incomplete tools, as well as something that most Open source software developers and Linux fans say - "Hyper-V is about Windows, but Windows is not that solid when it comes to enterprise hosting and data storage solutions.

The Popularity Of OS Virtualization Solutions To Increase

OS virtualization solutions such as OpenVZ and Virtuozzo will be widely used from web hosts and IT companies because they provide scalability and lower costs for virtualization. Another reason IT companies to prefer OS virtualization solutions include the fact that they impose little or no overhead.

Of course OS Virtualization method is not that flexible as other virtualization techniques because it does not allow the physical server to host a guest OS different from the one that runs on the main host. But companies like Parallels provide both Windows and Linux based virtualization solutions and this makes their products very attracting for businesses.

We can expect that more IT companies and data storage providers will be either involved and will move to virtualization market. Web hosts will increase their portfolio of VPS customers.

It is however important to mark that the virtualization technologies are still in their baby age. This means that areas of their application will expand.