80% of CIOs Prefer to Manage Virtual Infrastructure With Existing Tools

Veeam Software released research showing that 80% of chief information officers (CIOs) surveyed would prefer to extend the enterprise management frameworks already in place to manage the virtualized portion of their infrastructure. An independent survey of 253 CIOs shows 45% say management concerns are actually slowing their adoption of virtualization.

Included in the research:

• 49% cite a lack of visibility into the virtual environment as a delay to IT problem resolution
• 48% of organizations are selecting a hypervisor based on ease of management instead of depth of functionality
• 80% currently using specialist tools to manage their infrastructure would prefer to use their traditional enterprise-wide management tools but can’t due to a lack of functionality, including the ability to monitor, manage and make changes to a virtual infrastructure at a granular level

"When organizations first adopted virtualization, its attraction was clear: the ability to implement large IT environments without the need for a corresponding huge physical infrastructure," said Ratmir Timashev, Veeam President and CEO. "However, with these larger and increasingly complex virtual infrastructures come management challenges that traditional tools cannot cope with. As a result, rather than a single, overarching view of their entire IT estate, organizations are receiving a progressively more fractured picture. Left unchecked, this lack of visibility will impact the IT department’s ability to effectively manage its virtual infrastructure and consequently limit the true potential of this technology."

Forty-five percent of those surveyed stated that management concerns are actually slowing their adoption of virtualization. In addition, of those organizations that are using both VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V, 71% are currently facing difficulties managing both hypervisors from a single console. Moreover, 68% of all companies believe that it will become important to manage both VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V from a single dashboard.

"The future of virtualization must be about co-existence," continued Timashev. "With this technology becoming such a critical platform for a vast number of businesses, customers should not be in a position to have to compromise one vendor’s solution over another. Especially if this means that the intended cost savings of deploying virtualization in the first place is outweighed by the cost of managing it."

About the survey
Vanson Bourne, an independent market research company, surveyed 253 CIOs from organizations across the United States, United Kingdom, Germany and France that employ more than 1,000 people and use VMware vSphere.

To downpload the full report: VMware Management With Big 5 Enterprise Management Systems from Microsoft, HP, IBM, CA and BMC, March 2011 (you need to register)