Despite a sharp slowdown in U.S. business software spending, an April 2008 survey report from ChangeWave Research shows that virtualization may be spared as virtualization software spending has increased. The fact is, a troubled economy is probably yet another reason why virtualization software sales continue to grow. Virtualization is a technology that helps a company reduce its datacenter costs, such as less s Despite a sharp slowdown in U.S. business software spending, an April 2008 survey report from ChangeWave Research shows that virtualization may be spared as virtualization software spending has increased.The fact is, a troubled economy is probably yet another reason why virtualization software sales continue to grow. Virtualization is a technology that helps a company reduce its datacenter costs, such as less spending on server hardware, server maintenance, datacenter space, power, and cooling. So it makes sense for companies to continue to spend IT budget on virtualization software during troubling economic times. The survey of 1,956 respondents found that overall software spending is on the decline and with little relief in sight. Twelve percent of respondents said that they will invest more in software over the next 90 days, and 25% said they planned on spending less over the second quarter. Respondents blamed a general slowdown in business conditions and capital budgets as driving forces in their software spending decisions. However, on the virtualization front, there was good news. Paul Carton, director of research at ChangeWave Research, said, “Overall corporate software spending is still trending downwards in the U.S., although we see increased spending on virtualization software, with VMware strengthening its domination over this market. None of VMware’s competitors have shown anything like their level of growth, but note that we also find Citrix showing a healthy jump in share.”VMware strengthened its domination over the market with its share rising 12% in the latest ChangeWave survey (from 58% in January to 70% currently). According to the survey, none of the other virtualization vendors exhibited this skyrocketing growth rate like VMware; however, Citrix did climb 5 points from the previous survey to 26%, and Microsoft picked up three points to 22%. Looking ahead, one in ten respondents said their company will purchase virtualization products in the next six months. Among this group, 73% will buy VMware, while 17% plan to go with Microsoft and 15% with Citrix. Carton said that with a survey base in this number, a change of even one or two percentage points is considered significant. Software Development