Virtualization. TAdviser 2024 review

Until 2022, the Russian virtualization market was occupied mainly by Western vendors - world leaders in this segment. The number of Russian developers was limited, and the demand for their systems was low. The geopolitical situation and the sanctions regime have seriously changed the situation and the balance of power. Whether Russian vendors were ready for a sharp demand for their solutions, what disadvantages and advantages domestic virtualization systems have and what customers expect from them today - in a new TAdviser review.

The competitive landscape has changed in the virtualization market in 2023. After the departure of VMware, Citrix, Red Hat, Microsoft and other vendors, their shares were redistributed among the remaining players. Russian companies have the opportunity to strengthen their positions and occupy the vacated niches. This led to increased competition and increased development of new products, many new companies and startup projects appeared.

At the same time, despite active pilot projects and testing of Russian solutions, the share of use of VMware and Microsoft Hyper-V products has not changed dramatically. A very large number of customers still use solutions based on them, and the transition to domestic solutions is patchwork. Critical processes have not yet been transferred to Russian products - customers are watching how such solutions work, whether they hold the load well, whether they are stable.

All market participants face a common problem: their products have not yet reached the desired level - solutions to one degree or another are "raw." Despite this, the demand for domestic virtualization solutions does not fall. One of the key drivers is the onset of the deadline fixed in the recommendations of the Ministry of Digital Development to achieve a 100% share of replacement by state corporations and companies with state participation in foreign virtualization tools in their infrastructure.

As of 2024, many Russian companies continue to use foreign virtualization products such as VMware, Hyper-V, Citrix, etc. The share of foreign products is still significant - according to some reports, about 50-60% of large businesses and 20-30% of state-owned companies.

This is due to factors such as the maturity and functionality of foreign products. For many years, Western vendors have created full-fledged ecosystems of training, personnel certification and technical support, which makes their solutions attractive to users.

As part of the preparation of the Virtualization review, TAdviser asked market participants to talk about the most current trends in the development of virtualization platforms. Among the technological trends, they distinguish the following areas:

• Containerization
• Integration of artificial intelligence
• Focus on safety
• Cloud Platform Integration
• Edge computing
• Hyperconverged infrastructures
• et al.