The Last Virtualization Mile

As IT organizations look to deploy virtualization as widely as possible to cut costs, they are finding one surprisingly determined pocket of resistance.

According to a new survey of 750 IT executives conducted by Xangati, a provider of management tools that span virtual machines and the physical infrastructure they run on, the people responsible for managing enterprise applications are resisting virtualization because of ongoing concerns over performance and a general lack of visibility into virtual servers.

Ironically, when properly deployed and managed, the latest generation of virtual machine software can actually run most applications faster than a physical server. But even IT professionals concede that they lack the tools to convincingly make the case, with 80 percent of the IT managers surveyed saying they don’t have the tools they need to ensure performance levels of applications running on top of virtual machine software.

David Messina, vice president of marketing for Xangati, said that without these tools, most IT organizations will find their ability to further reduce IT infrastructure costs severely hampered.

Obviously, the biggest challenge when it comes to deploying virtualization across mission-critical applications may have more to do with perception than reality. But unless IT organizations can make the case for virtualization in the enterprise beyond a shadow of a doubt, virtualization adoption in the enterprise is likely to stall.

And as the study notes, most IT professionals aren’t getting paid enough to fight that battle unless somebody gives them the tools they need to easily win the argument.

Click through to see key findings in a recent survey by Xangati.

Number of virtual servers installed is growing rapidly.

Many organizations appear to be hitting a wall in terms of virtual machine adoption.

The easiest applications to virtualize have already been tackled.

Can’t reward for that which you cannot measure.

Application owners continue to be skeptical of virtualization.

But progess is being made steadily.

One way or another, the virtualization message is being delivered.

Production applications will require proof of virtualization peformance.

If IT doesn’t have confidence, why should the business?