1. Yes, it will reduce the number of physical servers needed, but not necessarily the actual cost of hardware. 2. Probably not in traditional servers; they lack the processing power for demanding server tasks.  It may affect blade design, as the idea of a blade server is to pack as many physical systems into the smallest space possible, but on the flip side, because of reduced processing power, more blades may be needed to meet specific processing needs. 3. Cloud computing has the potential to reduce the number of servers and overall processing power needed within the walls of an environment.  Consider a company of 100 employees with a $5000 server (plus $5000 worth of Exchange licenses), a $5000 server (plus $5000 in SQL Server licenses), and a $3000 server (plus $4000 worth of CAL's as Domain Controller, print server, and file shares) ... plus an $80K/year admin to manage them.  The company moves Exchange and SQL to the "cloud", $400/month for Exchange online ($4/user), $100/month for SQL Server on Azure, and $50K/year for an admin who can manage Active Directory (on the single server they bought and stuck in a closet, not a dedicated server/comm room) and act as local tech support ... company saves $24K/year (plus the initial hardware/software/licensing purchase) = $164,000 over the next 5 years.
I am looking for input on how the following will impact server purchases over the next 5 years: 1. Will server virtualization reduce the number of servers needed by users? 2. Will micro-server technology (i.e Arm/Atom) impact traditional rack/blade designs? 3. How will cloud computing impact traditional server ecosystems?
Server armageddon?