But VMware has dominated the virtualization market for so many years that the massive shift found in the survey may take longer than expected, if it happens at all. The virtualization layer, primarily composed of VMware software, has so many hooks into security, backup, automation, disaster recovery and various management tools that swapping hypervisors is no simple matter, argues an analyst who read the results of the survey, but was not involved in conducting it.

via Is VMware’s dominance of the virtualization market under threat?.

And here’s the conclusion.

VMware shops are certainly kicking the tires on Hyper-V and deploying it at least in test and development scenarios, and Microsoft is trying to lay the groundwork for both small businesses and enterprises to switch from VMware to Hyper-V. If 38 percent of businesses do change primary hypervisors within the next year, the folks in Redmond are likely to be the major beneficiary.