Editorial & Analysis

SMB adoption of virtualisation to outpace that of large enterprises in 2012

16 Feb 2012

Survey finds great enthusiasm for virtualisation - but significant shortcomings when it comes to back-up and disaster recovery processes for virtual machines.

Almost one in three servers owned by small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) will be virtualized by the end of 2012, according to a recent survey of IT managers at 6,000 SMBs in 18 countries.

That figure, taken from the Acronis Global Disaster Recovery Index 2012, suggests an growth rate for of around 21 percent on the previous year’s findings – that’s 50 percent faster than the pace identified in a recent Gartner report, which predicted a 14 percent increase in virtualisation adoption over the same period.

In the UK, virtualisation adoption is predicted to increase by 63 percent, with virtual machines accounting for almost a third (31 percent) of SMB servers by the end of 2012. A mere 13 percent of organisations in the UK still have no virtual servers in their current IT infrastructure.

According to the Acronis survey, SMBs cite increased efficiency, flexibility and speed of deployment as the main drivers for server virtualisation. However, despite the planned adoption of virtual machines (VMs), the survey identified widespread backup and disaster recovery shortcomings.

A full 60 percent of UK respondents admitted that they don’t back up their VMs as often as their physical servers, for example. That makes them the worst culprits on a global basis. Sixty-seven percent back them up ‘infrequently’, typically on a weekly or a monthly basis, and only 37 percent back up their VMs every day.

“Virtualisation has become more affordable and relatively easy for SMBs - the high growth rate of adoption should not be a surprise, said David Blackman, general manager for Northern Europe and MEA at Acronis.

“However, as protecting data is one of the most fundamental requirements for any business today, it’s particularly disappointing that VMs get such poor treatment. Some businesses are potentially playing Russian roulette with their virtual backups and, if their luck runs out, will face very real and potentially very messy consequences.”

Other findings from the survey, which was conducted for Acronis by research outfit the Ponemon Institute, show that using the cloud for off-site back-up is becoming a popular choice, with almost one-fifth (17 percent) of UK organisations using this option, but one-half of companies still rely on the traditional approach of physically taking back-up tapes or disks offsite each day. And over a third (35 percent) of UK businesses surveyed still don’t have an offsite back-up strategy in place at all.