Virtualization has been around for decades, but only with the rise of cloud computing has it become a widely known concept and a multi billion-dollar commercial market. IT research firm Gartner estimated that the server virtualization market grew 5.7 percent from 2015 to 2016, reaching nearly $6 billion in value. While server virtualization is now a mature sector, other forms of virtualization - such as network and data center virtualization (i.e., software-defined data centers) - are still evolving. Up and coming technologies such as software-defined networking are set to reshape how IT departments conduct their daily operations in the year ahead.