The strategic importance of server virtualization is growing, according to a survey of IT professionals in Fortune 1000 companies, conducted by TheInfoPro. More than two-thirds of respondents identified server virtualization as critical to their ability to achieve their business objectives and another 28 percent identified virtualization as "valuable."

Nine of ten respondents indicated that they believe that virtualized servers will be their next enterprise IT server platform. The respondents also indicated that server hosting on their own physical servers will become a thing of the past.

Primarily, the cost of maintaining physical servers, along with the large amount of space that must be devoted to running servers are driving the move to virtualization. Fifty percent of respondents indicated that their organizations will spend more on server software.