Two-thirds of large and mid-sized organizations think virtualization is business-critical, according to some new research by TheInfoPro (TIP). Another 28% think it's "valuable"; 90% of server professionals regard virtualized server as the next enterprise server platform.

They also figure hosting applications on their own physical servers will become the exception rather than the rule.

The immediate prods are cost, server sprawl and consolidation but the researcher thinks that as the market matures the provocation will be dynamic provisioning and disaster recovery.

TIP says 50% of its sample of 140 Fortune 10900 and MSEs indicated increased spending on server software.