CIOs Positive About Virtualisation But Skeptical About Hype

Biztech2 and Datacraft recently organised a power breakfast where IT leaders came together to discuss the possibility of ‘Better Data Centre RoI through Virtualisation’. The event boasted a presence of 19 IT managers from various verticals and kickstarted with issues faced commonly on the data centre and virtualisation front. How is virtualisation changing the IT scenario? With organisations slowly moving from client/server architecture to multi-layered SOA, where is virtualisation headed? Participants discussed these and other related questions.

In the initial part, all CIOs present also discussed their own virtualisation initiatives. Interestingly, not everyone had virtualised their data centre environment. There was a slight sense of skepticism. However, everyone was affirmative when it came to adopting the technology in future. The next phase of the event turned towards glitches in this technology, which different organisations are currently facing.

Satvinder Madhok, head-IT Governance, Strategy and Innovation, Barclays Finance, said, “How does one ensure that there is segregation taking place between users and data?” Another main challenge was regarding the management of hardware and software architecture.

Not forgetting that we are living in tough times, a very insightful point was made regarding virtualisation being considered as a recession-driven technology. CIOs should keep in mind that it is all about optimising the technology, whether there is a slowdown or not. All CIOs were of the view that there should be an industry-wise, holistic discussion about virtualisation. Another concern revolved around the investment already made in technology, after having put in so much money, one cannot at once virtualise the whole infrastructure.

There was a lot of skepticism about the hype, which has surrounded virtualisation till now. However, virtualisation will be playing a very important role in the days to come as a growth driver for cloud computing and other innovative models for delivery.