Not Quite Virtualized

In an event centered around virtualization a couple of weeks back, there were some things that came out rather clearly. First was that virtualization as a technology is creating a lot of ripples in India. Another point that came out was virtualization is indeed living upto its cost saving benefits for a lot of organizations.

However, on the flip side, a lot of CIOs complained of costs actually going up because of virtualization. Some of them even wanted to move back to a de-virtualized environment. More than just a couple of implementation challenges were also bought to the fore.

Well, that does explain the fact, that despite the hype and the selective adoption, there is a lot of confusion prevalent around virtualization. Awareness about implementation and usage also seems to be lacking.

In order to gauge the market sentiment in the right light, Dataquest, in conjunction with IDC conducted a survey exclusively on virtualization. The survey takes into account the views of 300 CIOs of various organizations, and their take on virtualization.

We present here the results, and our analysis of the of the virtualization scenario in India.

The Server Story

Simply put, the story is not too rosy. Going by the numbers, out of 300 organizations surveyed only 104 have gone in for server virtualization. That is less than 35%. Optimists will argue that the figure is certainly encouraging.

But heres the true story - in these organizations also (the ones that have gone in for virtualization) only an average of 5.6% of the total servers have been virtualized. Whats more the usage within the virtualized servers stands at some a dismal level.

But all said and done, last year proved to be a good year for server virtualization. As many as 27% organizations of the total 300 virtualized their servers in the last 12 months. And quite a significant number of them intend to do it in FY11.

However, the hurdle lies in the fact that the significant part of our overall base (51% organizations) say that they have no intention of implementing server virtualization at all. That in a way, sums up the mood of the mid level enterprises towards virtualization. A lot of SME CIOs believe that either their scale of operations or their talent pool is inadequate to support a virtualized server environment. Cost also has repeatedly been cited as a reason.

Owing to these reasons, it is clear to fathom why virtualization so far, has been patronized only by the big organizations in India. The implementation base is significantly higher for the large organizations.

Another interesting thing that the survey has thrown up is that virtualized servers are still not trusted with running mission critical applications for the heads of IT. Maximum organizations choose to run their collaborative apps like email on their virtualized servers. Infrastructure apps like firewall and proxy settings seem to be the other favorite on virtualized servers. Critical apps however, are still kept away from virtualized environments.

Coming to verticals, IT/ITeS leads the race with maximum percent (11.5%) of virtualized servers. BFSI follows with 8.5%. The numbers remain dismal for all other verticals.

Storing it up!

When it comes to storage virtualization, the scenario only gets worse. As compared to almost 6% of servers virtualized, the percentage of storage capacity virtualized stands at a dismal 1.9%. And well, this figure doesnt differ (in fact, is very minutely different) much from that of large organizations.

Storage virtualization then, is being treated alike by the big and the mid-sized. And the treatment doesnt seem too pleasant. Almost 75% of the organizations surveyed said that they have no intention of implementing storage virtualization at all.

However, when it comes to adoption as many as 23% of large organizations virtualized their storage in the last 12 months. The corresponding figure for all enterprises stands at 11%. Thus, though the percentage of capacity virtualized is minimal, the large organizations seem to be experimenting with their storage infrastructure.

A part of this cold response can be attributed to the fact that storage virtualization has come in the limelight only since a couple of years. And since the hype around it coincided with the onset of recession, the adoption has been cautious.

That is corroborated by the fact that even those organizations that decided to implement virtualized storage, did so on a very small scale and mostly for saving costs.

The complexity involved with virtualizing the storage infrastructure was a big factor that put off a lot of CIOs who were looking to simplify their storage. Lack of awareness and feature usability also emerged as a deterrent.

Coming to verticals, even the IT/ITesthe vertical that proved to be the saving grace for many a technology in the previous yearvirtualized only 3.1% of its storage capacity. The figures were negligible for the other verticals.

What the Year Holds

Analysts expect FY11 to be a slow year for virtualization. Since the organizations are still very cautious with their spending, virtualization implementations are not expected to pick up even this year.

However, on a final note, analysts do expect that more and more organizations will implement virtualization on a pilot basis and more full scale implementations will happen once the benefits become real and tangible.

Mehak Chawla
mehakc@cybermedia.co.in