A survey of 460 IT decision-makers from medium and large
enterprises found that more than 60 percent are disappointed in virtualization’s
cost savings, according to CA Technologies.
Moreover, respondents believe that automation plays a key
role in reaping the financial benefits of virtualization and cloud computing.
Nearly all (95 percent) respondents have implemented, are
piloting, or plan to implement virtualization in their organization. A large
majority cited reducing costs (85 percent) and increasing server utilization
(84 percent) as the primary reasons to deploy virtualization. However, 63
percent of respondents stated that they have not experienced as much savings as
expected, and five percent said the complexities of virtualization had actually
introduced new costs.
Change management is a huge overhead, as any changes
need to be accepted by all applications and users sharing the same
virtualization kit. While many organizations are seeing benefits from
virtualization, such as reduced hardware spending and improved server
utilization, these benefits often get overshadowed by the lack of productivity
improvements in data center staffing and operations,” said respondent Ian
Watts, senior technical manager of BT Americas.
The survey shows there is a direct correlation between IT service automation in a virtualized environment and cost-savings. For
example, 44 percent of survey respondents who said most of their server
provisioning processes are automated report they have significantly reduced
costs through virtualization. Conversely, 48 percent of those who said the
complexities of virtualization have introduced new costs also said most of
their server provisioning processes are manual.
“This survey further demonstrates that the promised
benefits of virtualization and cloud computing will be hard to realize without
first standardizing and automating routine IT processes,” said Roger Pilc,
general manager, Virtualization and Automation, CA Technologies.
“Without automation, IT staff can be overwhelmed by
the complexities and challenges of managing a highly distributed IT
infrastructure consisting of virtual and physical servers, applications and
dynamic cloud-based services. These complexities can negate any benefits
organizations hope to realize as this data shows,” Pilc added.
To become more efficient and to realize the full benefits
from virtualization and cloud computing, IT organizations need to automate and
integrate the physical and virtual server configuration, provisioning, monitoring,
security, software patching and more across a heterogeneous enterprise.
They need to reduce their reliance on manual processes,
and implement tools and procedures that automate standard management and
administrative tasks, as well as deliver consistent workload management. IT
automation is needed to ease management across a variety of computing
environments, including physical, virtual and cloud.
By TelecomLead.com Team
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