Survey: Continuity is top reason why companies virtualise

The fear of business disruption is the number one reason enterprises choose to virtualise their data centres, according to a survey conducted by virtualisation vendor VMware.

The Web-based survey, which polled 1,038 VMware customers from North America, Europe and the Asia Pacific (Australia, India, China and Japan) found 45 per cent of respondents citing business continuity as the main driver for deploying virtualisation. Server consolidation, which leads to cost savings for the company, proved to be the second most popular reason, garnering 40 per cent of the responses.

Thirty per cent of the VMware customers polled also cited improved manageability as a driver for implementing virtualisation, while 25 per cent indicated the intent to increase the number of virtualised business-critical applications within the enterprise.

The uptake of virtualisation also appears to be on the rise, with 42 per cent of respondents indicating that they require all new server workloads to be virtualised, up from 25 per cent a year ago.

Common applications

A variety of applications, both Windows and Linux-based, are being virtualised by companies today, according to the survey. Microsoft applications such as Dynamics GP, Exchange, SharePoint and SQL server are among the most commonly virtualised applications, along with customised NET-based applications.

Other popular choices include SAP, Lotus Notes and Oracle products such as PeopleSoft, custom WebLogic-based applications and Oracle database systems.

Desktop virtualisation

Survey respondents familiar with the concept of desktop virtualisation cited remote access as the most common reason for implementing desktop virtualisation. Centralised desktop deployment, which allows employees to access personalised desktops from most PCs or mobile devices, was the second most common response.