Virtualisation and cloud computing – expectations versus reality

The latest survey from Symantec regarding the move of business critical initiatives to virtual and hybrid cloud computing environments highlights the difference between what was expected and what was delivered.

The survey included topics such as server, client and storage virtualisation, storage-as-a-service and hybrid/private cloud technologies; and was conducted in 35 countries with more than 3,700 respondents.

The early adopters cited server virtualisation as an overall success; although scalability, reducing capital and operating expenditure as issues. Storage virtualisation saw a third being disappointed by agility, scalability and opex, while endpoint/desktop virtualisation saw 26% disappointed with deployment, application delivery and application compatibility.

77% of organisations are considering storage-as-a-service, with a large gap between expectation and reality for those who had deployed a solution already, citing complexity reduction as an issue.

Server virtualisation and virtualising storage were being deployed to save costs, improve performance and disaster recovery; but 56% said that storage costs had either somewhat or significantly increased with server virtualisation.

With initial deployments there are often teething problems are often the CTO will be reluctant to move business critical initiatives to new technologies, with reliability, security and performance being of the highest concern.

The key recommendation is to ensure there is alignment across the business and critically to leverage and modernise the existing network infrastructure.