High storage costs and performance remain key obstacles to virtualisation of critical business apps

A survey of 477 IT professionals from a broad range of industries finds that organizations are eager to virtualise their mission critical applications, but that storage-related costs and I/O performance issues remain significant obstacles to achieving those objectives. DataCore Software’s Third Annual State of Virtualisation Survey reveals that SQL Server, Exchange, SharePoint, Oracle and SAP represent the most prevalent Tier-1 applications targeted for consolidation. At the same time, integration difficulties associated with Flash memory and solid state disks (SSDs) rank high among the factors discouraging organizations from applying these fast technologies to their most latency-sensitive virtualized workloads and desktop virtualisation (VDI) programs.

Highlights of the survey include:
· 44 percent of respondents said the disproportionate storage-related costs were a “serious obstacle” or “somewhat of an obstacle” preventing them from virtualising more of their workloads. 42 percent of respondents said the same about performance degradation or inability to meet performance expectations.
· IT storage budgets are on a relatively tight leash in 2013 compared to 2012. More than half (51 percent) of respondents said their storage budget has remained stable, but 20 percent said their storage budget has been reduced, compared to just 14 percent in 2012. While 38 percent said their storage budget grew in 2012, only 30 percent said the same this year.
· Storage continues to be the biggest chunk of the investment in virtualization projects. These include both server and desktop initiatives. 52 percent of those surveyed said storage accounted for more than 25 percent of their virtualisation budget.
· Organizations are not flocking to public cloud storage in droves for their storage needs. Eight in 10 said they are not using any public cloud storage. This is particularly notable given the amount of recent attention devoted to public cloud options.
· Despite the incredible attention the industry is placing on solid state technologies, one in two respondents said they are not planning to use Flash/SSD for their virtualisation projects. When asked about what classes of storage they are using across their environments, nearly six in 10 respondents said they aren’t using Flash/SSD at all.

“The findings make it clear; storage is the ‘big’ problem IT pros must solve today. The value and need to virtualise critical applications is now well recognized, but soaring storage costs and unpredictable performance workloads associated with virtualisation and consolidation projects continue to impede their progress,” said George Teixeira, president and CEO of DataCore™ Software. “Surprisingly, nearly one in three respondents said they are still avoiding virtualisation projects altogether because the related storage concerns and costs are too high.”

“Storage virtualisation software like DataCore’s SANsymphony™-V storage hypervisor enables IT departments to manage all their storage enterprise-wide and to decouple key storage functionality and purchasing decisions from vendor-specific storage hardware platforms. This allows IT departments to regain cost control and achieve optimal utilization of whatever available storage they have, regardless of type,” continued Teixeira. “At the same time, DataCore significantly boosts performance by using cost-effective, memory-based cache acceleration technologies and by automatically selecting the best storage devices and performance available on the fly. This enables our customers to optimally power critical business applications and to meet the continuously changing I/O and capacity demands of these mixed workloads.”

The broad makeup of respondents to DataCore Software’s State of Virtualisation Survey provides insights across a statistically-significant cross-section of modern IT organizations from different size institutions and a wide range of vertical segments. IT professionals from organizations across the globe participated in the survey, with 56 percent of respondents from organizations with less than 1,000 employees, 23 percent of respondents from organizations with 1,000 to 5,000 employees, and 21 percent of respondents from organisations with more than 5,000 employees. Respondents represented a range of industries, including Financial Services (11 percent), Healthcare (12 percent), Government (13 percent), Manufacturing (15 percent), Education (13 percent) and IT services (14 percent). The average capacity managed by these organisations was 234 terabytes.