Business continuity has become a primary driver for virtualization, new market analysis has revealed and now surpasses server consolidation as a reason to consider virtual infrastructure.
Data gathered by VMware Inc on over 1,000 sites across the globe suggest that businesses are using the technology as a cost-effective means of providing high availability and disaster recovery. Previously, these were prohibitively expensive and called for massive hardware investment.
“With VMware’s ability to pool resources and automate essential management tasks, business continuity is within reach for many organizations” said company VP Raghu Raghuram. In addition, more customers are choosing to run their business-critical applications in virtual machines.
Some 45% of organisations were found to be involved with virtualisation projects as a means of assuring business continuity, as opposed to 40% that were driven by the objectives of server consolidation.
The most common reason given for implementing desktop virtualisation was remote access, followed by centralised desktop deployment to reduce management and administration costs.
VMware’s survey found evidence of a wide array of virtualsiation programmes that stretch from SAP and Lotus Notes Windows and Linux applications, to the most commonly virtualised Microsoft Great Plains apps.
