This IDC study provides IDC's top 10 predictions for the worldwide server market in 2008. "Server products are rapidly changing ? with respect to both form factor and density of computing capacity provided on each server system," said Jean S. Bozman, research vice president, IDC's Enterprise Platforms group. "They are being heavily impacted by trends that are gaining adoption across the IT world: virtualization, the use of multicore processors, workload consolidation, and management of physical servers ? and the multiple virtual servers that they support."

The combination of multicore processors and virtualization is making it possible to consolidate workloads that have been running on underutilized servers. The consolidation process reduces the floor space and the power/cooling requirements ? and yet it brings new challenges as well. "As more virtualized workloads run on physical servers, any interruption to the computing environment will necessarily impact more end users directly," Bozman said. "The servers will now be powerful enough, in terms of processing power and available memory and I/O, to take on enterprise workloads that were traditionally reserved for midrange servers and high-end servers. As a result, IT managers are going to have to consider how to operate and protect these enterprise workloads ? and how to ensure high availability and business continuity in the event that any one computing element goes offline."