Press Releases
71% of UK businesses under-utilising IT resources because of virtualisation confusion and fear
[13-11-2006]
Risk of altering production systems and downtime is IT directors’ greatest nightmare
London – 13th, November 2006, Research released today by Morse, the technology integration and services company, has found that only 29% of IT directors said they were using virtualisation in live business critical environments because they are afraid of the risks of using the technology in their live environments and systems. The results were even higher in financial services organisations, where 81% said they were not using virtualisation technology throughout the business because of the perceived risks involved. This is despite the benefits that virtualisation can bring, such as helping to reduce the complexity of IT systems, making them easier to manage, reducing power consumption and cooling needs, and saving space in the data centre.
"It’s unfortunate that the very organisations that stand to get the most benefit out of virtualisation have yet to reap the full advantages because they have failed to take a strategic approach," said Scott Reynolds, consultant, Morse. "While virtualisation has been a victim of its own hype to some extent, the fact remains that it is a hugely beneficial technology that can help businesses cut their costs in the data centre and make their whole IT environment much simpler and easier to manage. However, clearly most businesses have been put off and their fears must be addressed in order for them to see virtualisation as a viable technology that can be deployed safely throughout the whole organisation."
Many of the IT directors surveyed had specific fears preventing them from investigating virtualisation further for their company. 58% said that the risk of downtime when altering production systems was their biggest fear with server virtualisation. Others cited concern that virtualisation would cause a degradation in application performance (57%) or that the technology would be too expensive (31%). Almost one third (29%) said they feared that managing a virtualised environment would be too complex. Unsurprisingly, the fear of downtime was the biggest worry for IT directors in the manufacturing (80%) and financial services (71%) sectors.
These fears are somewhat understandable given that over one third (40%) of those surveyed had over 700 servers in their organisation, spread across the company’s headquarters, branch offices, and main and regional data centres. IT directors working in financial services were under the most pressure, with over half (56%) having over 700 servers under their remit. However, managing and maintaining such a large number of servers spread so widely across the organisation is both time consuming and costly. By virtualising and consolidating their servers, businesses can reduce the number of servers needed. They can also increase the utilisation rate of their existing servers by using virtualisation to run more than one application on one server. This allows businesses to save money by getting more use out of the existing infrastructure instead of automatically buying new servers.
Despite these benefits, virtualisation technology has not received wide-spread adoption because many still find server virtualisation confusing and think it has been over hyped. Over half of IT directors surveyed (54%) said they felt this was the case. Although it’s understandable that people are sceptical of virtualisation, taking a strategic approach and thinking about how and where it could be used in the organisation will be key to using virtualisation successfully.
For virtualisation to be fully embraced by businesses, it will need to be clear how deployment throughout the business can help solve current business issues. For example, 74% of IT directors surveyed said that top of their data centre wish list is to be able to lower complexity and management. This was followed closely by greater flexibility and being able to dynamically allocate resources (71%) and cutting power and cooling requirements (35%). Being able to reduce space was still also a key issue with 32% saying it was a top priority for them.
In the vertical sectors, the top priorities for manufacturing and financial services businesses were no different, with the need to lower complexity and management a key issue for 95% of IT directors in manufacturing and 71% of IT directors in financial services. IT directors in the retail, travel or distribution sectors listed their highest priority as greater flexibility and being able to dynamically allocate resources (85%). All of these issues can be addressed by virtualising and consolidating the current IT environment, but education will be essential to helping businesses keep an open mind.
"Both the market and virtualisation technology have now matured to a stage where virtualisation can help businesses address these real world problems if deployed throughout the organisation and not just as a point solution," said Reynolds. "In order to realise the benefits of virtualisation, businesses will have to take a strategic approach. Rather than crossing their fingers and hoping for the best, they need to plan carefully and identify their pain points and what they want to achieve. This could be lowering complexity and management or increasing flexibility and being able to dynamically allocate resources. Only through doing this strategic planning before going ahead with the implementation, will they be able to see how virtualisation can help them overcome these challenges and make the project a success."
The survey of 100 IT directors was commissioned by Morse and conducted by independent research company Vanson Bourne. Further details of the survey are available from Spark Communications on 0207 436 0420.
About Morse plc
Morse is an international consulting company, offering our clients specialist Business and IT advice and helping them execute for maximum benefit. We are a delivery-orientated company with focussed industry expertise, combining a powerful blend of management, application and infrastructure consulting skills.
Morse’s reputation is earned through providing essential industry know-how in a flexible and pragmatic style, where clients enjoy the benefits of innovative solutions and confidence from collaborating with a trusted and talented partner.
Morse infrastructure consulting provides technology and integration solutions to clients who want to make their IT more flexible and better aligned to their business goals. We offer services that include; the efficient and effective provisioning of technology, mission critical technology environments that deliver project ROI, flexible resources and architecture strategy and design.