Symantec Survey Shows Virtualization can Help Data Center Struggles

According to a new report created from the results found in a recent Symantec survey, some of the biggest challenges facing data center managers include tough internal service level agreements (SLAs), continuing data center growth, and a lack of qualified personnel and other staffing issues.

Global 2000 enterprises are spending more than $6.6 billion annually to help manage data center complexity, but average data center budgets have only increased a modest 7% worldwide over the last two year period and eleven percent of respondents said their data centers are growing at an alarming 20% or more a year.

The research also shows that ongoing data center challenges such as complexity, heterogeneity and an ongoing skill shortage are driving the difficulty in meeting SLAs. 32 percent report that service-level demands have rapidly increased, and 51 percent report that they have had more difficulty meeting service-level demands during the past two year period.

As data centers increase in complexity and management challenges, staffing problems become more pervasive. SLAs are becoming difficult to maintain because of staffing issues. 52 percent of respondents believe their data centers are currently understaffed to meet existing challenges. Even more interesting, 86% admitted that they are having problems finding and hiring qualified applicants and that 57% indicated that employees’ skills do not match their current needs.

Server virtualization and consolidation are considered top cost containment strategies for the majority of respondents, particularly in the United States. According to the research results:

• 90 percent of respondents are at least discussing server virtualization; 50 percent are implementing virtualization strategies.

• 91 percent are at least discussing server consolidation; 58 percent are implementing consolidation strategies.

• 75 percent of respondents are considering storage virtualization as a potential solution.

• 59 percent of respondents indicate Web applications are the most likely to be moved into a virtual environment, followed by database management applications, selected by 42 percent of respondents.

As data center managers increasingly turn to virtualization to contain costs and manage growth, there is a clear need for tools and technologies to manage both physical and virtual environments in a more consistent and comprehensive manner. These solutions can empower data center professionals to master the growing complexity of their data centers, and have greater confidence that they can deliver against the aggressive SLAs that have been set for them.

The State of the Data Center Research Report is the result of quantitative and qualitative research conducted in September 2007 by Ziff Davis Enterprise by surveying data center managers in Global 2000 and large public sector institutions. A total of 71 data center managers participated in focus groups, while 800 data center managers completed the online survey.