From Brett Anderson, Director, Enterprise Computing Solutions
A new survey shows that 40% of IT hasn’t even heard of desktop or server virtualization, highlighting a major potential roadblock to widespread adoption of virtualization technologies. The study, commissioned by a group of Cisco partners, shows that while CIOs see value in deploying a virtualization initiative, the rest of the enterprise is confused about virtualization’s advantages.
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The study summarized its major finding this way: “The basic misunderstanding by the general public about how virtualization works and what its benefits are stands as a major hindrance to widespread adoption of server and desktop virtualization.” Although the average employee understands the why and how of other policies like BYOD, virtualization is still a confusing topic for many. 60% of respondents said they didn’t know if their organization would benefit from virtualization–but all IT employees were able to give a clear yes or no to this question. Significantly, this number jumps to 80% among vice presidents, who often have the power to make an IT strategy decision. This highlights what might be the main reason virtualization adoption hasn’t yet happened in many organizations: CEOs and VPs just don’t understand what it is.
Perhaps if we as IT leaders were better able to explain the advantages of virtualization–better disaster recovery, easier remote access, energy savings and hardware consolidation, among many others–we might find leadership more receptive to virtualization initiatives.
Is this issue ripe, and confusion about virtualization is a major reason it hasn’t been widely adopted? Or is this just hype, and there are other reasons for organizations not moving to virtualization?
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