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SPECIAL REPORT: SERVERS ■
With virtualisation use growing,
is it time it became part of your
organisation’s IT strategy? EAMON
McGRANE takes soundings from
the industry
THE IT industry is used to big corporations set-
ting the trends and expecting the rest of the
sector to take their hands and pull them through
into the next phase, iteration or development.
With servers and server management the reverse
might possibly be the case, as smaller to medium-
sized enterprises are taking a leading role in
demanding that their servers do more, be more
efficient, consume less power and so on. With
SMEs being the predominant business culture in
Ireland, the industry can expect to see shifts in
what type of servers become available, how soft-
ware licensing is done and whether cooling and
power can be used with greater ease as vendors
seek to satisfy this most important and lucrative
client base.
Of course, it is not just SMEs looking for
greater efficiencies; the large corporates are also
endeavouring to cut their IT costs as well, but it
is an interesting change as smaller companies –
on cursory evidence at least – are pulling the
strings on this one. One of the key technologies
that has been in the ascendancy for the past few
years is virtualisation. It has been hyped and
hoorayed, not only by vendors and implementers,
but also by researchers, analysts and other
industry experts.
And with good reason. According to recent
research from IDC, some 54pc of businesses not
using virtualisation expect to do so in the next 18
months. The study also observed that while both
large companies and smaller organisations see
virtualisation as key to their data centre strategy,
their next challenge will be to make more effec-
tive use of this capability. “Virtualisation use has
exploded since our last survey of the European
market,” says Chris Ingle, consulting and
research director with IDC’s Systems Group.
“Both large organisations and smaller businesses
are using the technology for a wider range of
applications and for business-critical projects. As
use of virtualisation grows, the challenges around
managing complexity, finding skills and software
licensing become more apparent.”
IDC’s study also revealed that organisations are
increasing their virtualisation of x86 systems for
September 2008 Knowledge Ireland 49
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