Hosted environments are becoming increasingly popular and migration toward cloud computing-based infrastructure is helping to reduce the number of servers and switches companies require. As a result, vendors are expected to consolidate their offerings in the coming five years as they battle for supremacy in the data centre marketplace, reports the Dell 'Oro Group.
The firm's senior director Alan Weckel said that businesses can expect a glut of new entrants in the server and Ethernet switch market as they try and take advantage of this consolidation. Mr Weckel said that the impact on IT infrastructure end-users is palpable. "These migrations towards the cloud are reducing the numbers of both data centres and IT end-users that are making discrete purchasing decisions," he added.
Recently, Gartner research director Jon Hardcastle said that the drive towards consolidation in the cloud computing industry was benefitting both service providers and end-users. His comments were echoed by HBS Internet director Steve Jones, who claimed that companies were cutting server numbers by a factor of three with consolidation.