Virtualisation is a zero sum game for the customer.

He is saving on hardware. Spends on software - one time plus recurring.

There are many tradeoffs in both ie virutalised and non-virtualised scenarios. One has to see how well it fits the customer and adopt it.

Virtualisation is expensive from High availability, skills, trainings, administration point of view. Good from a asset utilisation point of view. If sizing not ok, then perf takes a hit too.

Standalone server+apps have a advantage of being taken out, rectified and brought back into the landscape, ability to isolate a problem - keep it running and fix it fast. But resources are wasted due to underutilisation.

Some fodder for discussion and information exchange

I tend to think that the real cause is that processor performance and system resources (RAM, etc.) are so abundant that there's no real need to upgrade more. Virtualization may just be a symptom of that fact, since one can better utilize the spare resources without serious degradation.

Seriously?

Just because innovation has caused people to use one server for multiple uses doesn't mean that server producing companies are out of luck. Its general business sense that a company will try to save money (in this case buying fewer servers). If the server companies want to see an increase in revenue, they'll have to start making servers that are more geared to specifically host VMs. More RAM, more storage, more CPU cores, and faster mainboards. The idea of having an OS directly installed onto a machine is old anyway. Get with the program!!