What's missing is maturity
“To the cloud!”……ah not so fast. In a recent ESG Research Report, The Evolution of Server Virtualization, ESG discovered that less than a third of respondents are regularly performing online migrations of virtual machines. The ones that were had a more mature environment and even then primarily performed online live migrations of virtual machines for planned hardware maintenance. IT administrators still want to maintain control of the environment and aren’t always open to automating tasks that could potentially impact application performance. Experience and confidence built up over time tends to motivate some IT shops to embrace automation on a virtualized platform. ESG has also found that IT organizations that have focused on improving the skill sets of their IT staff with virtualization certification and training programs spanning multiple teams are far more likely to adopt automation and certain “cloud” characteristics. Technology is not the barrier to automation on a virtualized platform. It’s not that IT is entirely opposed to automating routine and mundane tasks–they just need more time and experience with the technology. Remember that they have been operating in the x86 environment without any real sense of automation for years and the initial benefits of consolidation they are experiencing with server virtualization represent a giant leap compared to what they had to operate and manage before their virtualization investments. Dynamic IT will come with maturity that can be accelerated through training, certification, and organizational collaboration. It is also important that the technology industry focus on partnering to provide visibility, reporting, and analysis of the virtualization environment so that, when it comes to automation, IT administrators can determine the right time and the right type.
