Data Centre Managers Turn to Virtualisation for Peace of Mind

By Greg McNevin

November 1, 2007: Symantec has announced the findings of its latest worldwide “State of the Data Center” report, revealing that virtualisation and server consolidation strategies are becoming increasingly popular cures to data centre complexity and understaffing problems.

In its report, Symantec suggests that data centre managers are now facing more complicated problems than ever before due to rapidly rising Service Level Agreements (SLAs), staffing difficulties, increasing expenditures and data centre growth.

Conducted online, the survey canvassed 800 data centre managers in 14 countries, 65 percent of which reported having formal internal SLAs in their organisation, with 32 percent adding that service-level demands have rapidly increased. A further 51 percent claim they’ve had more difficulty meeting service-level demands during the past two-year period.

The security firm claims that budget growth is not keeping pace with overall data centre growth, while stringent SLAs mean delivery of ever-increasing levels of speed, agility and availability. It says that while increased SLAs may indicate the value IT can deliver, business is at risk of suffering due to problems with complexity, heterogeneity and an ongoing skill shortage.

The study indicates that finding qualified IT staff who understand business issues is currently more problematic than understaffing problems caused by budget constraints. Further to this, as data centre growth is expected to relentlessly continue, costs are also se to grow enormously, adding to the staffing burden.

Out of those surveyed this time, 52 percent said their data centres are currently understaffed, while 69 percent claimed their data centres are growing at least 5 percent per year, and 11 percent report 20 percent or more growth per year.

Next to these figures, Symantec says the average reported budget increase during the last two-year period was a modest 7 percent worldwide.

With up to 20 percent growth held against a 7 percent budget increase, it’s easy to see why virtualisation is proving popular as a cost, energy and time saving solution.

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