Overall New Server Shipments Virtualized Market Standings, by Vendor
Hewlett-Packard held onto the number one spot for worldwide new server shipments virtualized with 36 percent market share. HP's shipments declined 18 percent year-over-year in 2Q09 but grew one percent sequentially. These results were driven primarily by its x86 Proliant server business.

Dell continues to distance itself from the remainder of the field as the number two vendor with its market share growing nine percent over 1Q09. Dell’s relatively strong performance was driven by growth of Intel-based x86 servers in a weak market.

IBM remained in the third position with 15 percent market share. IBM achieved 14 percent sequential growth driven by a solid performance from its converged System p and x86-based servers.

x86 Virtualization License Market Standings, by Virtualization Platform
VMware continues to hold the number one (VMware ESX) and number two (VMware Server) virtualization platforms despite revenues declining 22 percent year-over-year. This was slightly more than the decline of 21 percent in total x86 virtualization licenses.

Microsoft saw its virtualization license shipments decline 16 percent year-over-year, due to the continued depreciation of Virtual Server 2005. However, Hyper-V showed a sharp increase of 54 percent, one year after its official launch and entrenching itself into fourth place while it cannibalizes itself into the number three position, past virtual server 2005.

Parallels Virtuozzo rounds out the top five with license shipments declining 36 percent year-over-year. Citrix XenServer showed the largest increase, growing 108 percent year-over-year due to the company changing its business model and offering the product for free with certain management functionality.

It's a bold seeding strategy that will see market share gains, but will take some time, if ever, to monetize.

Brett Waldman, research analyst, System Software, IDC, said: "Despite economic worries, we are seeing the continued increase of paid virtualization platforms, as it now accounts for more than 60 percent of all x86 virtualization license shipments."

"This is due to the maturation of virtualization deployments and the need for greater control with higher quality, fine grained management tools as IT departments continue to strive towards internal cloud computing environments," Waldman said.