A significant proportion of medium- and large-sized enterprise IT organizations overlook data storage requirements when implementing virtualization of their IT operating environments, according to a recent study conducted by DataCore.
The study, which examined data from 450 IT organizations in North America and Europe, found approximately 43 percent of companies did not anticipate the costs involved in desktop and server virtualization. As a result, these companies either did not begin their virtualization projects or were forced to delay them.
The study also found a majority of companies are yet to take advantage of storage solutions based on cloud computing technology. Approximately 73 percent of organizations have not yet deployed cloud-based storage.
Access to additional storage capacity is a key factor for companies moving their storage to the cloud, the study found, with approximately 70 percent of respondents stating this is a higher priority for them than the disaster recovery functionality offered by the cloud.
George Teixeira, president and CEO of DataCore, said “unanticipated storage costs, availability concerns and performance bottlenecks are the most critical factors bringing server consolidation and desktop virtualization projects to a standstill.”
According to Teixeira, “IT organizations in midsize and large organizations have turned to storage virtualization software solutions” in order to “overcome these operational and financial challenges by better leveraging existing storage assets and standard practices.”
The study found that the adoption of virtualization software is likely to increase. Approximately 95 percent of respondents indicated they are likely to deploy either server or desktop virtualization software from VMware, Citrix or Microsoft in the coming year.
Furthermore, nearly half of respondents said they are already utilizing storage virtualization software to deal with some storage-related obstacles preventing swift adoption of server and desktop virtualization.
Reinforcing the findings of the DataCore survey, a recent Computerworld report also found that in recent years, the number of organizations deploying virtualization has increased dramatically.