Communications and Technology Industry Research

Avocent (News - Alert) Corporation, a provider of IT operations management, sponsored a survey that shows companies are seeking better visibility into their data center operations to help mitigate business continuity challenges, manage virtualized systems, and control power consumption.

 

The survey, conducted by Actionable Research, polled 299 executives and IT managers in manufacturing, high technology, retail, banking, healthcare, education and government, asking them what they found to be the top challenges in aligning IT with business objectives.

 

“Our survey confirms that businesses are indeed challenged most by the need to effectively manage the increased complexity in today’s data centers, while at the same time keeping networks running smoothly, and power consumption costs down,” said Ben Grimes, Avocent CTO and vice president of corporate strategy.

 

“The findings further tell us that many administrators lack the tools they need to properly manage power usage in data centers – only 55 percent say they can monitor power usage today, and even then it’s mostly at the UPS level. These statistics show there’s a huge opportunity to improve overall data center management and a strong desire to implement ‘Green IT’ solutions.”

 

Survey respondents said that energy conservation was the most difficult issue to resolve with their current tools. Respondents felt that managing the total cost of power was the second most difficult task, and many noted that their interest and work with virtualization technology were influenced by the hope of ultimate energy savings.

 

According to the survey, 33 percent of companies have implemented server virtualization for energy saving goals; 55 percent of companies can measure power usage in their data center, primarily at the UPS level; and 83 percent consider the ability to measure power consumption at the entire data center level as “valuable” or “extremely valuable.”

 

While respondents said they began to move toward server virtualization, mainly for its cost reductions and energy savings – they also revealed that the technology offered unique challenges. A majority of respondents have rolled out some level of server virtualization, but 24 percent have experienced a disappearance of a virtual server from their system. Furthermore, 18 percent have permanently lost a virtual server. The top reason for deploying virtual server was for cost savings.

Business continuity, in the form of network uptime, is a constant challenge for those polled, with 35 percent of companies experiencing lost mission-critical data due to unplanned downtime and 43 percent of companies reporting that they experience, on average, up to five unplanned downtime events per month.

 

The survey also found that, businesses want to do more with the same or fewer IT resources. Those polled say their organizations planned to maximize use of their existing servers and other equipment to the fullest extent possible, through the end of 2008.

The survey provides insight into the nature of challenges companies face when managing complex systems, network and data center challenges, as well as the unique issues faced when integration between dissimilar networks is necessary. A full copy of the survey is available at the following URL: http://www.avocent.com