Cyber Threats
Security needs follow widespread move to virtual IT
In the past few years, enterprise IT has evolved, and so have the expectations of many companies’ employees.
In the past few years, enterprise IT has evolved, and so have the expectations of many companies’ employees.
With new tools available to improve productivity, employees are increasingly looking for new technologies to become a regular part of their daily operations. And as new virtualization technology makes this possible, employees throughout an organization will expect their organization’s resources to improve as well, according to InformationWeek’s Charles Babcock.
“Virtualization managers know instinctively that end-users won't accept a downgrading of their environment just to accomplish IT's virtualization goals,” Babcock, an editor with the publication who has years of experience in the IT industry, wrote in a recent report. “That's been one of the brakes on accomplishing end-user virtualization.”
Babcock’s comments come as the industry prepares for the upcoming Interop 2011 conference, which will feature a panel of representatives from several high-profile IT companies. These companies have seen a significant rise in demand for virtualization lately. Sumit Dhawan, vice president and general manager of the receiver and end-user services group at Citrix, told InformationWeek more than 100 of his company’s customers have each virtualized technology for at least 1,000 end-users.
Now, these executives are tasked with finding a way to strike a balance between technological advances and security threats.
This compromise is important because, once businesses have more faith in their data protection resources, they will likely be more comfortable making the switch to a virtual IT environment.
That was the sentiment taken away from an Acronis survey released earlier this year. Sixty-two percent of responding IT managers said they were concerned about their ability to recover from an incident with their data, while just 40 percent said they were confident in their IT department’s ability to recover quickly. Meanwhile, 68 percent of these respondents said they use at least two or three different data backup solutions, according to the study.