What will drive virtualisation spend in 2012?

19 Dec 2011

A survey of VMWorld attendees conducted by Quest Software suggests that virtualisation will be a key focus  of IT spending in 2012.

When corporate IT teams look to deploy new servers in 2012, will virtualisation be their default deployment methodology? Probably not in every instance, but a new survey from Quest Software suggests that virtualisation will be the big winner in 2012 budgets, with more than half of IT decision-makers spending at least 25 percent of their budget on virtualisation projects in 2012. Four out of ten say they may spend more than 50 percent of their budget on these projects.

But why does virtualisation continue to be a focus for investment? Respondents cited a range of benefits, with the most popular being ‘improved business agility’ (mentioned by 61 percent of those surveyed). Getting the most out of reduced IT budgets followed closely behind, cited by 56 percent of respondents. Other reasons given were the pressure to meet user expectations (31 percent) and supporting mobile users (28 percent).

It’s worth noting that the 235 respondents surveyed were all attendees at this year’s VMWorld conferences in Las Vegas and Copenhagen – and thus likely to be VMWare customers with solid experience of, and firm future plans for, virtualisation.

The survey results also suggest an increased need for systems management tools to govern virtualised environments – not surprising as this is the area in which Quest specialises, but it’s a finding that is echoed across a wide range of 2011 vendor-sponsored and independent surveys of IT decision-makers.

According to Eberling, “Customers now fully realise the complexity involved with managing the overall environment. Now more than ever before, IT needs a complete management solution set that lets them leverage this dynamic environment for the good of the business, giving them the agility and responsiveness they need to properly address their powerful and ever-demanding users.

In Quest’s survey, respondents were also asked about their plans to manage their virtualisation deployments, from back-up and recovery, desktop virtualisation, performance monitoring and capacity management. Back-up and recovery was rated as most critical by some 60 percent of respondents, while over two-thirds (70 percent) said they either have a solution to monitor virtualised environments already, or are in the process of evaluating one.

At the same time, more organisations are also prioritising their desktop virtualisation and capacity management projects, said Quest, with more than one-half of survey respondents stating that they already have a solution in place or are evaluating one.

Finally, the survey also revealed that, among respondents, virtualisation and private cloud are not simply experimental projects for test and development purposes, but also supporting core systems, said Mark Bowker, a senior analyst at market research company Enterprise Strategy Group.

“Virtualisation management of both servers and desktop is quickly becoming a high IT priority as business virtualise more mission-critical workloads and embrace desktop virtualisation,” he said.