Server virtualization is one of the hottest technologies in enterprise IT today. According to a recent survey of IT executives conducted for Accelerate by IDG Research Services Group, almost three-quarters of organizations are investing in it and 89 percent say the results have met or exceeded their expectations.

Such success is causing other forms of virtualization to rise with the tide, according to Mark Bowker, an analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group, based in Milford, Mass. “The goal of virtualization is to deliver a set of technologies that enable self-management, self-healing, agility, and ultimately the transparency of IT,” says Bowker. “Server virtualization was first, but the benefits can be applied across multiple IT technologies.”

Here are some other notable forms of virtualization:

• Desktop virtualization: This technology stores virtual desktop images in the data center and then pushes them out to client devices in real time. The IDG research study found that 41 percent of respondents are currently investing in desktop virtualization, citing reduced costs, greater manageability, and the ability to provision client devices centrally as key benefits. Desktop virtualization can also enhance security and compliance efforts, Bowker notes, which is a boon in highly regulated industries like government and healthcare.
• Application virtualization: One drawback of desktop virtualization is that each virtual PC contains a complete set of applications that IT staffers must patch and update individually. Application virtualization frees organizations from that issue by separating the application configuration layer from the client operating system. That enables administrators to handle all of their client application management tasks centrally from a server.
• I/O virtualization: As enterprises use server virtualization to cram more and more virtual machines onto one physical host, contention for I/O bandwidth can become a bottleneck. I/O virtualization allows organizations to partition available bandwidth and allocate it to individual blade servers or virtual machines. Available in blade servers from IBM Corp. and Hewlett-Packard, among others, as well as on virtual I/O appliances from Santa Clara, Calif.-based 3Leaf Systems and others, I/O virtualization is likely to receive considerable corporate attention in 2008 and 2009, according to John Sloan, senior research analyst at Info-Tech Research Group in London, Ontario.

Given its many positives, should IT executives wholeheartedly embrace virtualization in all its forms? “I think the right attitude toward virtualization is ‘crawl, walk, run,’” says Bowker of Enterprise Strategy Group. Like any new technology, virtualization can impact networks and applications in unpredictable ways. “The advantages of virtualization should not be ignored,” Bowker notes, “but it is important to understand how your specific workloads will respond in the virtual world.”

Tom Farre is a freelance journalist who has been covering the computer industry for more than 20 years.

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