More than a third of enterprise organisations are planning to switch virtualisation software provider in the coming year, according to research supported by virtual backup supplier Veeam.

This applies to both server virtualisation and desktop virtualisation. The quarterly index surveyed 578 enterprise organisations in the US and Western Europe found that 38% plan to switch hypervisor, while 34% plan to change desktop virtualisation supplier.

UK enterprises are relatively content with their hypervisor suppliers, with only 14% of UK companies planning to switch in the coming year, compared with 46% of German respondents and 44% in the US.

The main reason given for switching server virtualisation supplier was cost (59%), followed by functionality (48%) and licensing model (47%). The most popular reasons for switching desktop virtualisation supplier were licensing model (52%), cost (51%) and maturity (42%).

VMware dominated hypervisor adoption, with 68% of respondents saying that the company was their primary hypervisor supplier, compared with 16% for Microsoft and 14% for Citrix.

VMware also led in desktop virtualisation, with 54% reporting that it was their primary desktop virtualisation provider, compared with 25% for Citrix and 20% for Microsoft.

The index found that the proportion of servers that have been virtualised by respondent organisations was 40%, essentially the same as the proportion in the previous quarter. More than 80% of respondents said that they were planning to increase virtualisation within their organisations over the next 12 months.

Concerns about that increase were evenly spread across reliability, application performance, backup and restoration, managing the virtual estate and the need to wait for a hardware refresh before deployment.