KACE today announced the results of a new study that revealed more than three quarters of medium enterprises have adopted some form of virtualization. In addition the research showed the fastest growing area for virtualization is application virtualization, with 64 percent of medium organizations reporting they have either deployed or plan to do so in the next year. Also uncovered is the need for an integrated solution for systems management and virtualization. Seventy-one percent prefer to combine their systems management tools for both virtual and physical systems in a single, integrated product and many prefer their systems management tools offer integrated application virtualization management capabilities.
KACE Study: Virtualization Gains Momentum With SMBs
The research, consisting of an online survey of more than 500 respondents, the majority from medium-sized enterprises, was conducted by King Research and commissioned by KACE to gather data about the current state of virtualization adoption among medium enterprises. Focusing on hot-button issues such as growth of adoption, barriers to deployment, the importance of managing mixed physical and virtual IT environments, and specific areas of virtualization growth, the research revealed adoption of virtualization among the medium enterprise proved to be as rapid as enterprise adoption.
A summary of the key findings from the study include:
— 64 percent reported they have adopted or plan to adopt application virtualization in the near future, making application virtualization the fastest growing virtualization segment among medium enterprises surveyed;
— 85 percent of respondents revealed they have deployed virtualization technologies or plan to do so within the next twelve months;
— A reduction in hardware requirements was cited by 82 percent as the primary benefit they have achieved with virtualization;
— Over half reported cost savings as the most important consideration when justifying the cost of virtualization;
— 71 percent of respondents who have deployed application virtualization technologies cited they prefer systems management tools for virtual and physical systems offered in a single, integrated product;
— 86 percent felt that virtualization has had a positive impact on them personally — almost half cited they could do more with their budgets due directly to virtualization.
Survey metholodogy
A database of IT professionals was emailed and invited to participate in a Web survey on the topic of virtualization. A total of 519 respondents completed the survey representing hands-on IT professionals (36 percent), IT managers (32 percent), IT executives (2 percent) and others. This survey focused primarily on the responses of the 291 participants (56 percent) from mid-sized companies, those with 100-5000 employees.
The survey was conducted using Zoomerang, an online survey tool. Respondents were not compensated for participating in this survey except to be offered a copy of the final report. This survey was sponsored by KACE, a provider of IT automation appliances.