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Follow Us“Indian enterprises are discussing virtualization 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.”
The India findings of Symantec's 2011 Virtualization and Evolution to the Cloud Survey says that adoption of server virtualization is widespread, with 57 per cent of Indian firms implementing server virtualization versus just 45 per cent 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 virtualization are the most mature with 31 and 26 per cent of enterprises implementing, and private Storage-as-a-Service is the least mature with 21 per cent adopting.
The survey says early investments have revealed gaps between expectations and reality which indicate that organizations are still learning what these technologies are capable of and how to overcome the new challenges they bring with them.
The survey highlighted topics including server, client, and storage virtualization, storage-as-a-service, and hybrid/private cloud technologies; and the results uncover disparities between expectations and reality as enterprises deploy these solutions.
Server virtualization projects were the most successful, with only a 9 per cent average gap between expected and realized goals. The biggest gaps occurred in scalability, uptime and reduction in capital expenditures.
The average shortfall in storage virtualization was 31 per cent, with disappointments coming in reducing operating expenditures, agility and keeping pace with emerging trends.
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Gaps between expectation and reality
Respondents reported an average gap between expected and realized goals of 21 per cent with endpoint/desktop virtualization. They cited disappointments in ease of new endpoint deployment, virtual desktop support and smartphone/tablet integration.
Fifty-four per cent of organizations are considering private Storage-as-a-Service, but these projects are challenging to implement and fall short of expectations by 30 per cent. For example, reduction in data center requirements was a goal for 93 per cent of respondents, but reached by only 33 per cent.
These gaps are a hallmark of early stage markets where expectations are out of step with reality. As the virtualization and cloud markets continue to mature, the Symantec survey expects to see those gaps close.
The awareness around virtualization 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
Organizations investing in virtualization and hybrid/private cloud technologies tend to follow a similar path, starting by virtualizing 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 organizations are increasingly leveraging or planning to leverage virtualization for business-critical applications. Of enterprises who are implementing virtualization, 73 per cent plan to virtualize database applications in the next 12 months. Forty per cent plan to virtualize web applications, and 33 per cent plan to virtualize email and calendar applications. Thirty-three per cent plan to virtualize ERP applications.
The survey found that organizations are more slowly leveraging hybrid/private cloud technologies for business-critical applications. An average of 35 per cent 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.
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Quality of service challenges emerge as top priorities
As virtualization 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 (63 per cent) said storage costs somewhat or significantly increased with server virtualization.
Of those in the process of virtualizing storage, the top three reasons for deployment include improving disaster recovery readiness (69 per cent), reduction in capital expenses (69 per cent), and improving storage performance (65 per cent).
Eighty-one per cent of enterprises who have implemented server virtualization indicated that performance was a somewhat/extremely large factor in keeping various constituents from being more confident about placing business-critical applications on virtualized servers. Seventy-six per cent listed security as a significant/extreme challenge to implementing server virtualization.
Performance issues are a factor for the majority of organizations. Eighty-one per cent of those who have implemented server virtualization stated that performance was a somewhat/extremely large factor in keeping various constituents from being more confident about placing business-critical applications on virtualized servers.
Among enterprises that have implemented server virtualization, security was the number one concern. Fifty-five per cent said it was a somewhat/extremely large factor in keeping various constituents from being more confident about placing mission-critical applications on virtualized servers.
Of those who have implemented storage virtualization, 59 per cent stated improvement in storage performance and 57 per cent cited uptime and availability and reduction in capital expenses an important goal.
IT and business executives out of sync on the potential
According to the survey findings, 43 per cent of CFOs who are implementing hybrid/private clouds are less than 'somewhat open' to moving business-critical applications into those environments. Forty-three per cent of CEOs are cautious about moving these applications.
Main concerns include performance (81 per cent), security (76 per cent), and reliability (71 per cent).
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 75 per cent of those who deployed server virtualization 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.”
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Recommendations
Enterprise IT’s evolution to the cloud has a fair share of challenges, but also compelling rewards. Despite concerns, most enterprises are implementing virtualization and moving to a cloud computing future.
For these enterprises, Symantec offers recommendations to help make the journey as smooth as possible.
1. Ensure alignment between IT and executives in virtualization 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.
2. Don’t operate in a silo when it comes to cloud computing: Virtualization and cloud initiatives are
most 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.
3. Leverage and modernize 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 modernizing it as needed. Convert static servers, storage and networking into a virtualized pool of resources. Replace static provisioning with self-service provisioning, and make sure to implement monitoring and metering to demonstrate value to the business.
4. 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.