New UNIX Market Survey Shows Growing Consolidation Trend

 Customers Increasingly See Cost and Manageability Benefits from Consolidating Server Hardware

Beaverton, Oregon – February 14, 2005 – A new UNIX market study reveals a growing trend in which IT departments are abandoning multi-system ‘server farms’ in favor of consolidating multiple server workloads and applications on fewer, more powerful UNIX servers.

The study reveals that customers are increasingly turning to consolidate those applications onto mid-range and large UNIX servers, realizing significant costs and operational benefits.  The study was conducted by IT industry research and analysis firm Gabriel Consulting Group, Inc. (GCG). 

 

GCG’s first annual Consolidated UNIX Survey polled 150 UNIX customers worldwide representing a wide variety of organization sizes and industries, finding:

 

• 41% of IT manager respondents  run multiple applications on single UNIX systems
• 73% of UNIX Consolidators consider their consolidated applications mission critical to their organizations. 
• Almost 95% of respondents said they have seen lower overall hardware requirements due to consolidation
• Half of consolidators say they have realized large or moderate costs reductions.

 

“This survey shows impressive, growing support for UNIX consolidation, but what is most impressive is the degree to which users are receiving tangible benefits from consolidating their applications onto larger UNIX systems,” said Dan Olds, GCG principal analyst. “This striking degree of success signals a re-prioritization for IT buyers in favor of fewer, larger, easier to manage UNIX systems.” 

 

Improved Manageability

UNIX consolidation is also paying dividends in terms of data center operations according to survey results:

• Over 80% of respondents said that UNIX consolidation makes it significantly easier to manage SLAs (Server Level Agreements) and perform capacity planning.
• Almost 75% said that implementing UNIX consolidation has made overall server management easier

 

“The results from this survey show that UNIX customers are adopting more of a mainframe-like usage model on their larger UNIX systems,” said Olds. “The technology in large UNIX servers is mature enough to safely support simultaneous multiple applications, and it’s high time for customers to start using these features to increase system utilization rates and save money.”

 

The survey supports the position that ‘big iron’ UNIX servers will continue to play a critical role in data centers by hosting multiple mission critical workloads.

 

While overall, 41% of respondents are consolidating applications onto their UNIX servers, the survey found that the adoption rate varied depending on the dominate UNIX vendor in the customer data center.

 

Users who specified IBM’s AIX or Hewlett Packard’s HP-UX as their prevalent UNIX operating system are using UNIX consolidation at a significantly higher rate than those who cite Sun’s Solaris operating system.

 

The survey also found that data centers in large organizations are consolidating at a greater rate than those in smaller companies.

 

About Gabriel Consulting Group

Gabriel Consulting Group provides technology research, analysis, and consulting services to a wide variety of business and non-profit organizations. For more information, please see the company’s website at www.gabrielconsultinggroup.com