I posed the question about why readers of the hot aisle were running more than one hypervisor. An earlier poll had shown that 44% of respondants behave in a non-intuitive way and run two or more hypervisors.

Early results are in – with a poll size of 1021 1141 readers and discounting those who only use one hypervisor:

• 48% do so because of vendor pressure
• 26% do so because they allow different groups to do their own thing
• 12% like the single vendor support model
• 6% want to avoid licence fees and like the open source model
• 4% can’t support all of their software on one hypervisor
• 2% think that they need to move for technical reasons

Here is my take:

1. Technology differences are irrelevant
2. Licence costs aren’t that important
3. Compatibility isn’t that relevant
4. Risk and application support are the main drivers for hypervisor adoption
5. Some organisations need to get their act together in technology set management!

I think the poll shows that 60% of respondants choose to support more than one hypervisor because their software vendor tells them to (some like it, some hate it). This reflects what we all knew all along – content is king in the long term.

This will have significance for all of the vendors.

• Citrix and VMware need to work to get ISV support and lock in (as will Microsoft and Oracle)
• Microsoft and Oracle need to explain better the benefits of their single stack support model
• Running multiple hypervisors is a reality and we now need the glue and support to make this easier