An annual survey conducted by a consultancy group known as Gabriel Consulting points to the fact that virtualization is not very important to Unix customers. This survey was called “Is Commercial Unix Relevant in the Midmarket.” There were nine factors that were taken into consideration for the survey, according to a ZDNet.com report. These nine factors are the deciding factors during the selection of Unix for commercial purposes.
Out of the nine, virtualization capability ranked last. The other features that were on the list included stability, performance that is predictable, the ease of administration, familiarity, price, availability, quality of operating system and support from the vendor. All these features are essential while choosing commercial Unix and virtualization just does not meet the necessary capabilities.
Research Findings
This ranking can also be attributed to fiscal reasons. Consumers would not want to buy a large system to use as a virtual host as some very important applications and services are operated on them. This is only done in case virtual zones are being used in order to control the hardware resources and to segregate one source from the other. Commercial Unix implementations are also expensive. For instance x86 is affordable when compared to Unix. Companies do not waste their Unix resources in operating a Windows web server. An x86 cluster could be built for the same price.
Despite these facts, Unix is central to several organizations and the number of professionals signing up for Unix training classes is steadily rising. An important fact to consider is that these finding are only for medium sized businesses (40,000 employees or less). Bigger businesses rank virtualization as their fifth determinant. This is owed to the fact that larger establishments use virtualization solutions that are related to their vendors or zones. These big companies can afford to buy the equipment and related infrastructure that is required to support virtualization on commercial Unix. Large companies buy commercial Unix because of its stability and durability. The cost factor ranks seven in the survey.
Research Conclusions
It is vital for vendors of Unix to concentrate on the strong characteristics of the operating system and should continue to offer virtualization solutions in the form of zones. The need for spending more funds on virtualization research is unnecessary. Zones are a mature technology. Unix enables users to setup many virtual machines on a single system. It additionally gives better isolation and leverage. These qualities make it ideal for a Unix training course. Zones make handling multiple applications easy. Configuring zones is simple, secure and lightweight. Capability comes as a standard with Unix.
It is important that commercial Unix vendors provide back up for companies who want to use virtualization. The idea that Unix is fading away is a huge misconception. More than 80% of the medium sized businesses that were considered in this survey stated that they only intend on increasing their usage of Unix if it does not stay constant. This makes it clear that commercial Unix is extremely relevant to the industry even though virtualization may not be considered important. A technical course in Unix will help developers stay current.
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