Virtualisation seen as beneficial to 60 per cent of firms

More than 60 per cent of companies are experiencing the benefits of running virtualisation as a way of reducing their IT costs.

This is according to the Corporate IT Forum, whose recent survey of 170 organisations found that the technology was growing rapidly in all sectors but some are still more keen on it than others.

Indeed, retail sector IT has the highest proportion of virtualisation usage at 65 per cent, while the lowest usage is in manufacturing sector IT at a still respectable level of 48 per cent.

“Virtualisation is established. It is a known thing. People are happy with it. The distinction between private cloud and virtualisation is becoming blurred,” said Dani Briscoe, research services manager at the Corporate IT Forum, told Computer Weekly.

She added that due to its streamline effectiveness, virtualisation enables data centres to prepare for the cloud and, unlike when Corporate IT Forum conducted a similar survey 18 months ago, there is now an identifiable progression from virtualisation to full cloud computing.

And the reason for this is largely cost based.

“One box can run many servers. People can reduce hardware support costs, but there is added complexity in licensing costs,” Ms Briscoe explained.

One respondent to the survey stated that they intend to use virtualisation extensively as part of their firm’s ongoing cost cutting exercises.

A similar study conducted recently by IDC found that 40 per cent of chief information officers at companies based in the United States listed virtualisation and server consolidation as a more important IT function than any other this year.

After virtualisation, investment in cloud services was second in on their priority list, followed by collaboration tools, business analytics and consolidating application portfolios.

David McNally, IT executive advisor at IDC, said that 2012 will be the year in which IT focuses its attention from service delivery to cost cutting.

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