Calling all virtualization users!! Alessandro over at Virtualization.info decided to create an informal virtualization marketshare study. He’s seeing the same thing that I am – there’s a big discrepancy between the published IDC numbers and the published Gartner numbers. Make sure to go over to Virtualization.info to take the survey.
This actually opens up the discussion on how to create a good survey that reflects the market properly. I’m always skeptical of polls of any nature. I know that in theory you can create a good set of results from a relatively small sample size but I always question that. For example, how can we be sure that the survey hits customers of all sizes and all markets? How can we be sure the customers are actually using the products they are answering about and to what extent they’re using them? Once you get the data, how do you extrapolate the data to a much wider marketshare number instead of being stuck with the marketshare over the small group? All things to think about as we try and figure out this set of numbers.
Hey, at least we get visibility into the methodology this time. Hopefully I’ll get that out of IDC on my call with them later today.
