Survey Says IT Execs See Virtualization Savings

A new survey offers some insights into why companies are -- or are not -- jumping on the server virtualization bandwagon.The full text of CDW's "Server Virtualization Life Cycle Report" is available here. Several other sites, however, including DarkReading and ServerWatch, provide a good summary of the survey's findings. Among the most interesting points:

- More than 90 percent of the IT executives surveyed (387 total, working for companies with 100 or more employees) have implemented server virtualization technology. In addition, 54 percent have already completed the deployment process.

- Nearly 90 percent say their companies now follow a "virtualization first" strategy -- "a requirement that network users prove a new software application does not work in a virtual environment before the company will buy a dedicated server to support it."

- Among those who have not moved mission-critical applications to virtual servers, 17 percent cited security concerns, while another 17 percent said hardware support was an issue.

- More than 60 percent "still employ applications that simply should not run on virtual servers because of the criticality of the data and the applications' functions."

- A whopping 95 percent "believe they are saving significant money as a result" of virtualization.

The fact that so many companies are saving money, and the widespread adoption of "virtualization first" policies should be interesting to smaller firms which fall into the 100-plus employee category. And while security concerns are clearly an issue, I was somewhat surprised that more companies didn't cite them as a bigger problem -- good news, perhaps, for vendors' efforts to get ahead of the curve.

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Then again, some of the responses seem a bit confused. Consider the fact that so many companies are gung-ho on "virtualization first" policies, even as they hesitate to move business-critical applications and data to virtualized environments. Do these companies not recognize the widely-touted reliability and disaster recovery features associated with server virtualization, or are these features simply failing to deliver the goods?

As usual, this type of survey raises as many questions as it answers, and it's a good idea to take it with a grain of salt. Even so, it is impossible to ignore one key conclusion: Virtually every company that implements server virtualization believes it saves them money.