The use of virtualisation software in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) will rise by 55 per cent on 2008 figures by the end of the year, a new report has claimed.

According to Gartner, many companies are taking advantage of the lower costs associated with the technology as well as a reduction in management requirements and resource utilisation.

"The current recession that is affecting various economies in EMEA could prove to be a short-term brake on uptake of virtualised technologies," said Rene Millman, a senior research analyst with Gartner.

She added that vendors "must be aware" of how technology such as this can save organisations money by more effective server use as well as "lower associated power and cooling costs within data centres".

This week, Gartner also predicted that traditional emails could be phased out in as little as three years after the development of the software-as-a-service market, which is expected to grow in popularity exponentially over the next couple of years.

More than half of small businesses (53 per cent) believe that the most important benefit of outsourcing is guaranteed response times for IT support. London-based Connect conducted the research in 2007.