According to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Server Virtualization Tracker, 18.2% of all new servers shipped in the fourth quarter of 2009 were virtualized, an increase from 15.2% in the same quarter of 2008.

New server shipments virtualized in the fourth quarter of 2009 increased year over year for the first time in 2009 to 352,533 units, as customers came out of the economic downturn with a “virtualize first” mentality.

“The recovery in server spending is being led by x86 systems where virtualization continues to remain a top priority,” said Matt Eastwood,   group vice president of Enterprise Platforms at IDC.

“IDC sees virtualization as a critical evolutionary step in the journey to the private cloud. Customers are quickly moving beyond the core hypervisor and focusing on mobility, self-provisioning, and metering and chargeback capabilities. As a result, IDC believes that automation tools increasingly represent the battleground in determining the winners and losers in a marketplace which is rapidly reshaping itself.”

After its worst year ever, however, analysts say spending in the sector should grow by a modest 3.3% next year. The question remains, however: On what?

Look, any growth at all is reason to cheer after watching IT spending plummet 6.8% in the past year. Analysts at Gartner say the IT industry will return to growth with 2010, but that growth will be modest — especially in the United States.

Gartner provided the latest outlook for the IT industry during Gartner Symposium/ITxpo, which is going on in Orlando through October 22.

And while these pros are predicting growth in the sector, they’re warning IT leaders not to be overly optimistic.

“While the IT industry will return to growth in 2010, the market will not recover to 2008 revenue levels before 2012,” said Peter Sondergaard, senior vice president at Gartner and global head of Research. “2010 is about balancing the focus on cost, risk, and growth. For more than 50 percent of CIOs the IT budget will be 0 percent or less in growth terms. It will only slowly improve in 2011.”

One big concern: The recession’s forced many IT managers and CIOs to put off replacing old servers and hardware.

With delayed purchases likely to continue into 2010, organizations need to start worrying about the impact of procrastination.

Gartner analysts say nearly 1 million servers have had their replacements delayed by a year. (That’s a little over 3% of the worldwide installed base.)  In 2010, it will be at least 2 million.

“If replacement cycles do not change, almost 10% of the server installed base will be beyond scheduled replacement in 2011,” Sondergaard said. “That will impact enterprise risk. CFOs need to understand this dynamic, and it’s the responsibility of the CIO to convey this in a way the CFO understands.”

The problem isn’t only with equipment failure. It’s also about the ability to keep up with the growing demands organizations are putting on their infrastructure. As data storage needs skyrocket and applications continue to demand more processing power and memory, upgrade and replacement delays will take their toll on end users and productivity.

In other words, now might be the time to prepare your money folks that postponing replacements could be penny wise and pound foolish.

But as the amount of data that must be backed up increases, it puts a big strain on those resources.

Here’s some advice on getting the most out of your backup, courtesy of Gartner analyst Dave Russell:

•    Tape isn’t dead. The number of companies backing up to disk is still high and tape still offers a
cost-effective way to get what most firms need – but it’s got problems.
One disadvantage is that it still involves more manual processes – so there’s more chance of human error, for example, if someone forgets to change tapes, or if they’re lost.

•    You have to test, especially when you’re using tape, which isn’t as reliable as disk. Doing regular recovery exercises will help make sure you can get the data before you have to.

•    Try deduplication. According to Russell, when backups are performed, typically only about 10% of the data has changed since the last backup. That leads to a lot of compounding of unnecessary information.

Deduplication software helps by saving online one instance of each file. It costs money, of course, but it can cut down on space needs, which can save a good bit, especially if you’re using disks.

That’s because recent surveys found first quarter sales revenues in the server market were the eighth consecutive quarter of positive revenue growth for the industry.

It was also the highest first quarter revenue in the worldwide server market since 2001.

These figures come from IDC, experts in market intelligence, advisory services, and events for the information technology, telecommunications, and consumer technology markets.

Other numbers in the recent report:

• revenue in the worldwide server market grew 3.5% year over year to $13.0 billion in the first quarter of 2008
• more than 2 million servers were shipped for the second consecutive quarter
• unit shipment growth of 7.8% year over year in 1Q08 demonstrates that worldwide demand for servers has remained healthy in the quarter, even as virtualization technology is being adopted worldwide
• volume systems revenue growth improved to 5.4% year over year in the first quarter, and
• HP and IBM again finished the first quarter in a statistical tie for the number 1 position in the worldwide server market with 29.0% and 28.1% share respectively.

For a closer look at the IDC report, visit here.

What’s a good way to get IT to pay attention to energy costs?

Shift at least some of your utility expenses to IT’s budget. That’ll get their attention.
It’s happening in more and more companies these days as data retention rules are changing and storage requirements are skyrocketing.

For all the talk about energy consumption in the data center, it seems many IT managers aren’t “thinking green” when they make decisions about computer hardware, servers and cooling systems for their growing data centers.

For them, reliability and price/performance continue are bigger issues than low-energy processors and high-efficiency fans.

This could be because IT managers, in many cases, aren’t responsible for the cost of utilities used to power and cool their data centers or run the organizations desktop computers, monitors, phone systems or other technology apparatus.

The utility bill, in many cases, never crosses the IT manager’s desk.

Out of sight, out of mind

The survey of 128 IT managers during the fourth quarter of 2007, found that 44% do not consider utilities when preparing their IT budgets. The remaining 56% include all or part of their IT utilities expenses in their IT budgets.

The rising cost of energy will likely make conservation a higher priority for most organizations. If IT managers have to control energy costs, the budgeting system can hold them accountable for it.

As one the largest consumers of energy in an organization, IT managers will have a new opportunity to show the value they bring to the table.