Users Find Flexibility And Cost Savings Of Virtualized Systems Are Compelling

Flexibility is the leading driver of virtualization and cloud computing adoption use, while security is the biggest worry, according to a new survey designed identify current trends in virtualization and cloud computing utilization and to collect input for addressing the IT management demands of those users.

VMware and Amazon EC2 have the largest market penetration in virtualization and cloud computing, respectively, the survey found, while there a large number of organizations are deploying applications on Xen, KVM, Rackspace Cloud and Google App Engine.

Additional findings in the 2010 Virtualization and Cloud Computing Survey include:

•  40.7% indicated that they preferred to deploy servers virtually, 29.3% indicated they used virtualization whenever possible.
• 43.3% of participants indicated flexibility as the reason for using virtualization while 33.3% indicated hardware savings as a reason for using the technology.
• The number one stated goal with regards to virtual infrastructure was Cost Savings (64.7%) followed by Deployment Control specifically controlling virtual sprawl.
• 70.7% preferred tools that managed all infrastructure rather than point solutions that were virtualization specific.
• The vast number of virtualization users don't utilize automation. In managing virtual environments only 39.3% of virtualization automate the starting and stopping of virtual machines based on operational conditions.
• 73.3% have not made a decision on their virtualization management solution.
• 25.8% indicated they would be deploying hosted data services.
• 50.8% indicated they used no specific management tools for cloud computing and 33.3% indicated using tools provided by their hosting provider.
• Security was the number one concern for cloud computing followed by management and monitoring.

Comment from Mark Hinkle, VP of Community at Zenoss: Cloud and virtualization technologies are impacting IT architecture in an unprecedented way, and while the technologies develop it's equally important to provide complementary tools that provide visibility and management capabilities for the modern datacenter. This survey provides data on real enterprise usage trends so we can develop software that helps users fully understand and manage their virtual infrastructure.

Zenoss Inc., a provider of dynamic service assurance products for public, private and hybrid clouds and corporate sponsor of Zenoss Core, sponsored the 2010 Virtualization and Cloud Computing Survey of more than 200 organizations.

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