Server Virtualisation Adoption Rises In India

Symantec Corp. has announced the India findings of its 2011 Virtualisation and Evolution to the Cloud Survey which examined how organisations plan to move business-critical initiatives to virtual and hybrid cloud computing environments. The survey highlighted topics including server, client, and storage virtualisation, storage-as-a-service, and hybrid/private cloud technologies; and the results uncover disparities between expectations and reality as enterprises deploy these solutions. CEOs and CFOs are concerned with moving business-critical applications into virtual or cloud environments due to challenges including reliability, security, availability and performance.

“Indian enterprises are discussing virtualisation and private/hybrid clouds. While agility and affordability are the main drivers, having fewer legacy systems is helping this transition,” said Vijay Mhaskar, vice president, Information Management Group, Symantec. “The transition brings in a new set of challenges related to security, scalability, and disaster preparedness.”

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Gaps Between Expectations and Reality Reveal Market Evolution

Adoption of server virtualisation is widespread, with 57 percent of Indian firms implementing server virtualisation versus just 45 percent globally. One-third of those surveyed, are in the discussing/planning stage for private and hybrid cloud deployments. Of the technologies evaluated in the survey, server and storage virtualisation are the most mature with 31 and 26 percent of enterprises implementing. Private Storage-as-a-Service is the least mature with 21 percent adopting.

Early investments have revealed gaps between expectations and reality which indicate that organisations are still learning what these technologies are capable of and how to overcome the new challenges they bring with them. Respondents were asked about initial goals in server, storage, and endpoint virtualisation; private Storage-as-a-Service; and hybrid/private cloud. Those who have already implemented were asked which goals they actually achieved. The difference between the two answers revealed an expectation gap.

• Server virtualisation projects were most successful, with only a 9 percent average gap between expected and realised goals. The biggest gaps occurred in scalability, uptime and reduction in capital expenditures.

• The average shortfall in storage virtualisation was 31 percent, with disappointments coming in reducing operating expenditures, agility and keeping pace with emerging trends.

• Respondents reported an average gap between expected and realised goals of 21 percent with endpoint/desktop virtualisation. They cited disappointments in ease of new endpoint deployment, virtual desktop support and smartphone/tablet integration.

• Fifty-four percent of organisations are considering private Storage-as-a-Service, but these projects are challenging to implement and fall short of expectations by 30 percent. For example, reduction in datacenter requirements was a goal for 93 percent of respondents, but reached by only 33 percent.

These gaps are a hallmark of early stage markets where expectations are out of step with reality. As the virtualisation and cloud markets continue to mature, we expect to see those gaps close. The awareness around virtualisation being an enabler for private and hybrid clouds is widespread, but the important thing to bear in mind is that it is critical to plan a seamless move. This is to ensure that resultant benefits like simplicity, affordability and efficiency offered by these environments is achieved.

Cautious Approach To Business-Critical Applications

Organisations investing in virtualisation and hybrid/private cloud technologies tend to follow a similar path, starting by virtualising less critical applications such as test and development environments and progressing to more important applications such as email and collaboration; line of business; eCommerce and supply chain; and ERP/CRM.

The survey shows that organisations are increasingly leveraging or planning to leverage virtualisation for business-critical applications. Of enterprises who are implementing virtualisation, 73 percent plan to virtualise database applications in the next 12 months. Forty percent plan to virtualise web applications, and 33 percent plan to virtualise email and calendar applications. Thirty-three percent plan to virtualise ERP applications.

It was found that organisations are more slowly leveraging hybrid/private cloud technologies for business-critical applications. An average of 35 percent of business-critical applications such as ERP, accounting, and CRM are in hybrid/private cloud environments. Respondents stated concerns over disaster recovery, meeting high-availability SLAs, authentication vulnerabilities, guaranteeing that data won’t leave the country, and application compatibility.

Quality of Service Challenges Emerge as Top Priorities

As virtualisation and private cloud technologies become more widely adopted, the cost and performance of storage is becoming increasingly top of mind. More than half of respondents (63percent) said storage costs somewhat or significantly increased with server virtualisation. Of those in the process of virtualising storage, the top three reasons for deployment include improving disaster recovery readiness (69 percent), reduction in capital expenses (69 percent), and improving storage performance (65 percent).

Eighty-one percent of enterprises who have implemented server virtualisation indicated that performance was a somewhat/extremely large factor in keeping various constituents from being more confident about placing business-critical applications on virtualised servers. Seventy-six percent listed security as a significant/extreme challenge to implementing server virtualisation.

Performance issues are a factor for the majority of organisations. Eighty-one percent of those who have implemented server virtualisation stated that performance was a somewhat/extremely large factor in keeping various constituents from being more confident about placing business-critical applications on virtualised servers.

Among enterprises that have implemented server virtualisation, security was the number one concern. Fifty-five percent said it was a somewhat/extremely large factor in keeping various constituents from being more confident about placing mission-critical applications on virtualised servers. Of those who have implemented storage virtualisation, 59 percent stated improvement in storage performance and 57 percent cited uptime and availability and reduction in capital expenses an important goal.

IT and Business Executives Out of Synch on the Potential

According to the survey findings, 43 percent of CFOs who are implementing hybrid/private clouds are less than “somewhat open” to moving business-critical applications into those environments. Forty-three percent of CEOs are cautious about moving these applications.

Main concerns include performance (81 percent), security (76 percent), and reliability (71 percent).
In practice, many C-level concerns are unfounded based on responses from IT. For example, concerns about performance are a top reason cited for caution, yet more than 75percent of those who deployed server virtualisation achieved their goals related to performance.

“Awareness around these emerging technologies is prevalent, but the Indian enterprise is yet to move completely. There is a wait and watch approach to the level of maturity in the market before implementation,” said Anand Naik, director, Technology Sales (India & SAARC), Symantec. “Indian CIOs evaluate new technologies with a business driven ROI approach to technology decision–making to meet company’s objectives.”

Recommendations

• Enterprise IT’s evolution to the cloud has a fair share of challenges, but also compelling rewards. Despite concerns, most enterprises are implementing virtualisation and moving to a cloud computing future. For these enterprises, Symantec offers recommendations to help make the journey as smooth as possible.

• Ensure alignment between IT and executives in virtualisation and cloud initiatives: It is important to show that you can address C-level concerns such as security and availability. Show that their concerns, while important, can be successfully overcome by leveraging existing best practices and robust solutions that ensure valuable information and critical applications are protected and highly available.

• Don’t operate in a silo when it comes to cloud computing: Virtualisation and cloud initiatives aremost successful when implemented as mainstream, comprehensive IT initiatives. Because they involve all aspects of IT (servers, storage, network, applications, etc.) they can fail when managed as siloed “special projects.” Rather, treat cloud as an IT-wide initiative with all departments included in planning and implementation.

• Leverage and modernise your existing infrastructure: Before you’re ready to implement hybrid/private cloud, make sure you are leveraging the existing infrastructure to achieve the same efficiencies and then modernising it as needed. Convert static servers, storage and networking into a virtualised pool of resources. Replace static provisioning with self-service provisioning, and make sure to implement monitoring and metering to demonstrate value to the business.

• Set realistic expectations and track your results: Remember that despite the hype, cloud is a new and still maturing market. Do your homework to set expectations that are realistic, then follow up and track results to identify ways to improve project efficiency going forward.

Symantec’s Virtualisation and Evolution to the Cloud Survey

Symantec’s Virtualisation and Evolution to the Cloud Survey is the result of research conducted in April 2011 by Applied Research, which surveyed IT and C-level professionals responsible for computers, networks and technology resources at small, medium, and large enterprises (defined as 1,000-2,400, 2,500-4,999, and 5,000+ employees). The report was designed to gauge how organisations plan to move mission-critical initiatives to virtual and hybrid cloud computing environments. The survey included more than 3,700 respondents from 35 countries in North America, EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa), Asia Pacific and Latin America. There were 200 respondents from India.