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Category: storage

  • Compuware Expands SaaS Portfolio With Gomez Acquisition

    Compuware, software and consulting provider, announced it has completed its acquisition of Gomez, one of the two major forces in web application monitoring services that has a leading SaaS solution for desktop/laptop web application monitoring.

    “This is a very interesting and potentially game changing move in both the end user experience monitoring and the application performance management (APM) markets,” Jean-Pierre Garbani wrote on the Forrester Blog for Vendor Strategy Professionals.

    The closure of the $295 million cash transaction brings about 270 new employees to Compuware, including the complete Gomez leadership team. Jaime Ellertson will remain with the organization and serve as President of Gomez, the Web Performance Division of Compuware.

    "IDC believes the Gomez/Compuware marriage is a good match with little overlap and lots of upside," wrote Mary Johnston Turner, Tim Grieser and Melinda-Carol Ballou of IDC in a report titled Compuware Expands SaaS Portfolio With Gomez Acquisition.

    "With the completion of the acquisition, Compuware will be able to address a customer’s full range of in-house and internet-based application performance management requirements on an end-to-end basis," the report says.

    Compuware will retain the Gomez brand, technology portfolio and business model while moving purposefully to achieve additional technical, sales and marketing synergies. The firm says they expect the acquisition to be operationally accretive this fiscal year.

    The combination of the companies’ significant SaaS revenues makes Compuware the world’s leading SaaS infrastructure management provider, as the company claims.

    "We’re thrilled to welcome the Gomez team to Compuware," said Compuware President and Chief Operating Officer Bob Paul.

    "Together, Compuware and Gomez will-through a solution that features rapid time-to-value, ease of use and real-time answers-give IT and business executives the optimal application performance they need to drive brand image, customer loyalty and revenue."

    Gomez, the Web performance division of Compuware, provides the platform of Web application experience management solutions used by organizations to optimize the performance, availability and quality of their Web and mobile applications, and proactively identify business-impacting issues.

    The on-demand Gomez platform integrates solutions for Web load testing, Web performance management, cross-browser testing and Web performance business analysis that test and measure Web and mobile applications from the "outside-in" – across all users, browsers, devices, and geographies – using a global network of over 100,000 locations.

    According to the company, over 2,500 customers worldwide, ranging from small companies to large enterprises – including 12 of the top 20 most visited US Web sites – use Gomez solutions to “increase revenue, build brand loyalty, and decrease costs.”

  • Taking Technology to Higher Level: Interview with Manoj Bhoola, Country Manager at HP

    Does your organisation need technology products, solutions and services that drive innovation and rapidly scale up or down to meet changing times?

    Well, look no further than HP, the world’s largest technology company, says Manoj Bhoola, Country Manager, HP Enterprise Severs, Storage and Networking, HP Enterprise business.

    HP has unleashed new products onto the market, among them HP Neoview Advantage, an enterprise data warehouse platform which supports real-time insight and decision making, allowing customers to respond to business events faster.

    This release offers dramatic improvements in perfomance, capacity, footprint and manageability, says Bhoola.

    HP Neoview Advantage is also designed to reduce the cost of ownership with industry-standard components and prebuilt, pretested configuration optimised for warehousing.

    Manoj Bhoola

    "The HP Neoview Advantage solution is flexible to be used for a very large data warehouse solution, as well as a data warehouse that is much smaller, but requires high through-put.

    "This is an enterprise solution based on our robust Non-Stop architecture within a bladed solution," says Bhoola.

    HP has also launched the HP Converged Infrastructure Architecture, a solution which delivers a technology environment that rapidly adjusts to meet organisation’s changing needs.

    HP Converged Infrastructure addresses IT sprawl, the main cause of technology spend being focused on maintenance instead of innovation.

    "Technology is a fundamental contributor to business innovation," says Bhoola.

    "With HP’s portfolio of products, services and solutions, organisations can build technology environments that deliver the outcomes that matter today and tomorrow," he adds.

    For customers who do not want to build infrastrature themselves, HP Enterprise Services provides a full range of IT outsourcing services to deliver an HP Converged Infrastructure.

    Organisations can outsource all or part of their infrastructure based on their business needs.

    HP also offers flexible financing solutions for customers deploying an HP Converged Infrastructure through HP Financial Services, the company’s leasing and life cycle asset management services subsidiary.

    HP Financial Services makes it easy for customers to deploy technology that meet their rapidly changing business needs.

    Asked if the global recession had anything to do with the timing of the launch of the new products, Bhoola said it was important for companies to be proactive to survive difficult times.

    "During an economic downturn organisations look towards all areas within their business to either reduce costs or find new innovative ways to increase profits.

    "HP has an ideal solution that will reduce costs by implementing a converged infrastructure, as well as make organisations data warehousing more effective by providing a solution that is built on their Non-Stop architecture with the flexibility of a bladed system," says Bhoola.

    New research conducted on behalf of HP shows that more than 90 percent of business decision makers believe business cycles will continue to be unpredictable in the next few years. As a result, 80 percent recognise a need to be far more flexible in their approaches to business and technology.

    And given this situation, how is HP responding to ensure that it is always on top of the situation?

    "Products are continually innovated and updates are provided to meet certain business requirements.

    "HP’s solution offerings has evolved with the current unpredictable market conditions in mind, and launched products that will assist organisations to become more flexible to adjust to their business requirements.

    "Businesses more than ever need to have the ability to see around the corner, and a strong Business Intelligence (BI) solution will assist with this.

    "The HP Neoview Advantage will provide a robust infrastructure that will support these requirements," says Bhoola, who has a background in computer science and marketing and has been in the IT industry for over 25 years.

    Bhoola attributes HP’S success to continuous investment in its people and innovation.

    "Many organisations have reduced product lines to reduce costs and cut back on innovations.

    "HP continues to improve solution offerings to better optimise customer infrastructure by leveraging off of industry standards and providing unified management software to enable improved elasticity of customers’ infrastructure investment.

    "HP is unique in that they have continued to invest in innovation and continually update their product offerings responding to the market requirements," says Bhoola.

    Although the African continent is a huge growth area for HP, Bhoola says South Africa remains the major driving force of technology.

    "Many organisations still set up offices in South Africa and then launch their Africa business from SA. Doing business in Africa is becoming much easier in that the infrastructure is being addressed and matches many first world countries," adds Bhoola.

  • In The Era Of Virtualization: Interview with Richard Gilder, CEO of Intercept

    The cloud has been a popular computing term for 2009 and going into 2010 will likely see the rise of that term as content become more accessible from multiple location as opposed to being locked down by local storage.

    Already users of cloud computing are experiencing more success as costs are lowered, work and necessary files are accessible from anywhere, reducing the need to be directly in front of a computer in the office or at home. More incredible is the access mobile devices have now in accessing necessary files, content, and sites as we move into an era where virtualization becomes more commonplace.

    Intercept is a virtualization company within the UK specializing in desktop virtualization, server virtualization, application virtualization and storage virtualization. A very large part of their business is based in the cloud. Majority of our clients seek virtual hosting for their enterprise computers. They  basically help develop a system allowing generic access, via the cloud, to any application that a company has.

    When asked about the innovation of Intercept, Richard Gilder, CEO of Intercept replies, "we are now in the process of putting together some new services which are now launched which is exchange share point and we’ve got another CRM coming on site soon."

    Fear of the Cloud

    Richard Gilder

    For many companies, much like it is with anything new, there is still that hesitation when adopting new ways of doing business. The cloud has been on the receiving end of both criticism and praise, and ultimately both sides have solid cases, it’s strong companies and good practices that can prevent catastrophic data loss and ensure a smooth changeover and maintenance of the idea.

    "I think the biggest fear is actually within the wording that your putting your data and storing it ‘in the cloud’. This is actually probably the most frightening thing about it. Its going via the cloud and will be completely replicated to multiple data centers for redundancy purposes," says Richard.

    The idea of giving up that control on your content and not having it locally stored is not an uncommon fear. Looking at things on a more personal level, using simplified tools like Google Documents has raised severe concern over ownership of content placed on equipment that is not technically "yours."

    If content is suddenly gone, what is the actual cost on the client. In terms of personal documents, it may be subjective, but when working with large corporations, the loss could be financially devastating. Releasing the grip on the the way things have always been done is most certainly an uphill battle, but thee are many factors that can make cloud computing appealing to the client.

    Money savings in terms of man power and equipment is a major selling point, reduction of carbon footprint is huge for the green enthusiasts, consistent and professionally reliable customer service personnel to answer questions for clients and address their needs, and finally, a long list of client success with the transition of locally stored data and applications to virtual cloud services.

    Advancements In the Field of Virtualization

    Significant advances have been made in the field of virtualization in just the last few years, but do the clients grow at the same pace, or does Intercept see that the technology completely outpaces the needs of the user?

    "Generally the clients infrastructure is growing at a rate in which the technology is actually growing faster," says Richard. "We’ve had a tough couple of years with a country wide perspective in people spending upward with technology has lapsed slightly."

    In the last two years alone Richard has seen people and companies become incredibly receptive to change and enthusiastic with the coming technologies. Intercept tends to focus the clients on the scalability, hardware savings, and most importantly in today’s green focused society, energy savings.

    It’s apparent that technology is not the only thing advancing at great rates, but also the reduction of the carbon footprint by many companies like Intercept that offer large scale businesses the ability to tap into a virtual network in order to get their job done.

    "Its an absolute colossal benefit and I think this should be pushed more and more from a green point of view. We run green government events, we run green events across the country and we should be pushing this side of things. We all are very very worried about climate change certainly not just in the UK where it rains a lot but within the global environment." Richard responds when asked what he and Intercept feel with regards to the green impact of virtualization.

    Conferences and Expos

    Intercept is always providing briefings in the UK regarding the virtualization market. The IP Expo is their biggest event for the quarter thus far, but several Ustream events are being planned right after Christmas.

    They had 5 seminars which they ran focusing on some of their key clients, such as Windsor & Maidenhead, which show colossal cost savings up in excess of 350,000 pounds the first year, all the way through to Ed Lowry’s, which is a very large law firm in London who virtualized their infrastructure over the last couple of years.

    Plans are being made currently for the 2010 year where they hope to continue their success at demonstrating the bonuses of moving to the cloud and worrying not about the data and not about the company’s security, but rather where the company is going and how it can be more successful. Richard Gilder, CEO of Intercept says shifting that focus for them is what he likes to do.

  • Vordel Introduces Cloud Service Broker to Manage Multi-Domain Services

    Vordel, a provider of governance products for Cloud Computing and Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), released the Vordel Cloud Service Broker that aggregates and manages multi-domain services.

    Organizations who wish to use Cloud services in conjunction with their own SOA and those of their partners face major issues related to reliability and trustworthiness. One significant challenge is aggregating services from multiple domains including Public, Private and Community Clouds – into coherent composite services and applying policies to them.

    The Vordel says its Cloud Service Broker solves this multi-domain problem by registering services from all three domains into a single repository – the multi-domain registry repository – enabling monitoring, management and policy enforcement.

    The Multi-Domain Registry (MDRR) aggregates together services across domains. These domains include not only Cloud providers such as Amazon and Google, but also local on-premises services, and business partner services.

    In this way, all of the services on which a business depends are managed in one place. This becomes a single point at which compliance to Service Level Agreements, compliance to privacy and security mandates, and usage statistics can be viewed.

    Vordel Cloud Service Broker provides audit trail of Cloud service usage – analytics of Cloud Computing usage includes not only raw usage information, but also information about service quality, patterns of usage over time, and identity of users.

    It also allows developers to link together local applications with Cloud-hosted applications. The local applications may be accessed via Web Services interfaces, via database calls, via message schemes such as MQ or JMS or simply via the file system.

    Throttling is the “surge protector” of Cloud Computing. If an application makes a high number of calls to a Cloud service then the Verdel’s new service can deflect a portion of the calls to back-up service, newly provisioned for this purpose.

    Vordel CEO, Vic Morris, speaking about the Cloud Service Broker at VordelWorld in Dublin, said "Trust is a major barrier to Cloud adoption particularly among enterprises. It’s clear that many organizations see the value of incorporating Cloud Services into their IT infrastructure, but they also have concerns about the reliability and performance of these services outside their domain of control.

    “The Vordel Cloud Service Broker addresses these issues by providing a trustworthy and reliable onramp to Cloud services allowing businesses to monitor and manage them in the same fashion as their own internal services. This means that composite applications can be built in a completely seamless fashion offering users full visibility, trust and control," he added.

  • AFCOM Survey: Most Data Centers Not Ready for Cyberattack

    Significant findings of AFCOM’s 2009/2010 Data Center Trends survey reveal that though threat of cyber terrorism is real, it is not being adequately addressed by the world’s keepers of the most confidential financial, military and personal data.

    Survey also reveals that despite hype around cloud computing, only 14.9 percent of data centers have deployed cloud solutions to date – and it shines a new light on the fate of mainframes.

    In addition, it reveals the government is behind its private industry counterparts in terms of greening initiatives.

    Meanwhile, it shows that the mainframe may be losing its place in worldwide data centers, as servers become more capable.

    And cloud computing, despite the hype, hasn’t pushed beyond 15 percent acceptance at this point. In comparison, 73 percent have implemented virtual processing.

    Data center greening

    The survey re-iterates that greening of the data center is no longer just a concept – it is actually taking place, and on a large scale, with 71.3 percent of all respondents indicating they are actively engaged in greening initiatives at this time.

    And while 71.3 percent are, in fact, engaged in greening, only 42.2 percent have a “formal” greening initiative.

    According to respondents, the most important results they have experienced as a result of implementing green measures are in power efficiency, 60.8 percent report they are using less power and 51.4 percent have implement cooling efficiency strategies. In addition to power and cooling efficiencies, 11.5 percent also report a significant savings in water usage.

    Data centers & cyber terrorism

    Data center professionals must be well-equipped to handle and respond to cyber terrorist attacks, but according to AFCOM’s survey, there’s considerable room for improvement.

    Respondents revealed that 60.9 percent of all data centers worldwide officially recognize cyber terrorism as a threat they need to deal with, but only a little over one-third (34.4 percent) have included it in their disaster/recovery plans, which would include their best defense plans if attacked.

    Only one in four, or 24.8 percent, has addressed cyber terrorism in their policies and procedures manuals and only 60.2 percent have a written policies and procedures manual.

    Meanwhile, less than one in five, or 19.7 percent provide any cyber terrorism employee training. On the positive side, however, 82.4 percent report that they do perform background security checks on all potential new employees, another solid defense against cyber terrorists.

    Data center consolidation

    As the economy suffers, more companies have traditionally looked to consolidation as a method of saving money. The economic downturn we are experiencing today is no exception, with 62.1 percent of all respondents either already in the process of consolidating one or more data centers, or seriously considering it.

    More than half of respondents (52.1 percent) plan to relocate their newly consolidated data center to another existing facility, or build an entirely new one to accommodate the additional requirements.

    Emerging technologies

    According to the survey, the technologies with the highest levels of adoption in today’s data centers are: virtual processing, implemented by 72.9 percent of all respondents, Web applications (70.4 percent), automation (54.8 percent) cluster computing (50. percent), and cloud computing (14.9 percent).

    Surprisingly, in addition to the slim 14.9 percent who utilize cloud computing, this technology has been considered by an additional 46.3 percent, but never implemented.

    “Our analysis shows that data center managers need to develop more comprehensive cyber terrorism policies, and get more aggressive in greening, particularly in government agencies where greening lags behind private industry. Finally, it’s time to decide where the mainframe is still viable and needed, and where high-end servers can do a more efficient job,” said Jill Eckhaus, CEO of AFCOM.

    AFCOM is the data center association that represents both the IT and facilities side of the data center. Respondents, part of AFCOM’s 4,500 member data center sites, represent 27 countries, 83 percent in the U.S. and 17 percent overseas; 60 percent are responsible for Information Technology, 31 percent Facilities and 9 percent represent other roles in the data center

    AFCOM 2010 Data Center World will take place March 7-10, 2010 at the Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center in Nashville, TN.

  • Intel and Numonyx Announce a Breakthrough in PCM Technology

    Intel and Numonyx, a provider of memory technologies, announced a key breakthrough in the research of phase change memory (PCM), a new non-volatile memory technology that combines many of the benefits of today’s various memory types.

    For the first time, researchers have demonstrated a 64Mb test chip that enables the ability to stack, or place, multiple layers of PCM arrays within a single die.

    These findings pave the way for building memory devices with greater capacity, lower power consumption and optimal space savings for random access non-volatile memory and storage applications, the companies announced.

    The achievements are a result of an ongoing joint research program between Numonyx and Intel that has been focusing on the exploration of multi-layered or stacked PCM cell arrays.

    Intel and Numonyx say their researchers are now able to demonstrate a vertically integrated memory cell – called PCMS (phase change memory and switch). PCMS is comprised of one PCM element layered with a newly used Ovonic Threshold Switch (OTS) in a true cross point array.

    The ability to layer or stack arrays of PCMS provides the scalability to higher memory densities while maintaining the performance characteristics of PCM, a challenge that is becoming increasingly more difficult to maintain with traditional memory technologies.

    Memory cells are built by stacking a storage element and a selector, with several cells creating memory arrays. Intel and Numonyx researchers were able to deploy a thin film, two-terminal OTS as the selector, matching the physical and electrical properties for PCM scaling.

    With the compatibility of thin-film PCMS, multiple layers of cross point memory arrays are now possible. Once integrated together and embedded in a true cross point array, layered arrays are combined with CMOS circuits for decoding, sensing and logic functions.

    "We are encouraged by this research milestone and see future memory technologies, such as PCMS, as critical for extending the role of memory in computing solutions and in expanding the capabilities for performance and memory scaling," said Al Fazio, Intel Fellow and director, memory technology development.

    Greg Atwood, senior technology fellow at Numonyx, added that the results show the potential for higher density, scalable arrays and NAND-like usage models for PCM products in the future.

    “This is important as traditional flash memory technologies face certain physical limits and reliability issues, yet demand for memory continues to rise in everything from mobile phones to data centers" he said.

    To provide more information about the memory cell, cross point array, experiment and results, Intel and Numonyx will publish a joint paper titled "A Stackable Cross Point Phase Change Memory,” which will be presented at the 2009 International Electron Devices Meeting in Baltimore on Dec. 9.

  • Gladinet Launches Cloud Gateway for Cloud-Hosted Desktop

    After pioneering the concept of integrating a wide range of cloud services on a PC desktop with its introduction of Cloud Desktop earlier this year, Gladinet, the ubiquitous cloud storage client, rolled out Gladinet Cloud Gateway v1.0 and Cloud Desktop v1.3.

    The company says both new products are designed to meet the cloud computing needs of small and medium-sized businesses – a category that until now was underserved by cloud service providers.

    If Cloud Desktop turns the Internet into a virtual PC, Cloud Gateway is its file server. Built on the same open platform as Cloud Desktop, teh Gateway connects individual desktops to cloud storage through one access point.

    "Cloud Gateway acts as a liaison between Cloud Desktop and cloud storage," explained Gladinet co-founder Jerry Huang.

    "Before, if a company had 100 employees using Cloud Desktop, they needed 100 connections to Amazon S3, Google Docs or whatever services their employees were using. With the Gateway, that’s all changed. Now SMBs only need Cloud Gateway to connect to cloud services, regardless of how many different interfaces or accounts they may have. The Gateway acts as a file server to the Desktops, which simply connect to it over their LAN."

    According to Huang, allowing one server to support many individual desktops, the application gives SMBs the freedom to scale back their own data storage capacity while providing centralized administration and backup capability.

    “Files stored at various offsite data centers are as easy to access as if they resided on the user’s hard drive. Thanks to Cloud Gateway’s use of smart caching, copies of files stored with cloud services are quickly accessible on local desktops – eliminating the problem of lost data in the event of cloud service business closures,” he said.

    Gladinet assures that once configured by an administrator, Cloud Gateway is available to every Cloud Desktop user in a company and requires no account information to be entered by individual users, no matter how many different cloud services they’re using.

  • Texas Memory Systems Sets New SPC-1 Records for Flash Storage Performance

    Texas Memory Systems announced that its RamSan-620 Flash Solid State Disk (SSD) has submitted a record setting SPC-1 Result.

    Launched in August, the RamSan-620 produced 254,994.21 SPC-1 IOPS with Average Response Time of 0.72 milliseconds all from a 2U rack-mount chassis.

    The RamSan-620 delivers its performance at a cost of only $1.13 per SPC-1 IOPS. That SPC-1 Price-Performance is better than any competing RAID solution or Flash solution, as the company claims.

    According to the firm, Texas Memory Systems now holds the top 3 positions for storage price-performance as well as Average Response Time.

    "Texas Memory Systems is to be congratulated for producing an SPC-1 Result that demonstrates excellent performance with outstanding response time," said Walter E. Baker, administrator of the Storage Performance Council.

    The Storage Performance Council     (SPC) is a vendor-neutral organization that establishes storage benchmarks and disseminates objective, verifiable storage performance data.

    SPC-1 is a sophisticated performance benchmark for storage subsystems. The benchmark simulates the demands placed upon storage in a typical server-class computer system. SPC-1 provides measurements in support of real-world environments and is designed as a source of comparative storage subsystem performance information.

    The RamSan-6200 is a scaled up system that combines twenty RamSan-620 solid state disks in a single datacenter rack and uses Texas Memory Systems’ TeraWatch software to provide unified management and monitoring from a single GUI console.

    The system utilizes enterprise grade Single Level Cell (SLC) Flash as well as multiple levels of RAID and advanced Flash management algorithms.

    A single RamSan-620 unit provides 5TB of SLC Flash with 250,000 sustained IOPS for random reads and random writes. Each RamSan-620 unit can support 2 to 8 Fibre Channel or up to 4 InfiniBand links.

    The company says the falling cost of high speed SSD now makes it cost-effective to replace racks of hard disk drives. For example, a single 5 terabyte RamSan-620 can outperform a 500 drive RAID at a fraction of the cost, power requirement, and data center space,” the company says.

    “The RamSan-620 established new Flash records using off-the shelf servers and systems that can be reasonably purchased, rather than multi-million dollar, limited environment supercomputing class systems that do not reflect typical data center capabilities,” according to Texas Memory Systems. .

  • iSuppli Reports Strong DRAM Market Growth

    The DRAM industry in the second and third quarters of 2009 posted the strongest sequential growth in revenue and pricing seen in at least five years, indicating that the recent market rebound is real and is likely to continue into 2010, according to iSuppli.

    Global DRAM revenue rose by 35 percent in the third quarter compared to the second quarter, according to a preliminary estimate from iSuppli. This follows a 34 percent increase in the second quarter.

    The revenue rise in the second quarter brought an end to a three-quarter losing streak that began in the third quarter of 2008. Revenue had fallen by 19 percent in the first quarter of 2009, plunged by 38 percent in the fourth quarter of 2008 and decreased by a moderate 1 percent in the third quarter of 2008.

    Meanwhile, global DRAM Average Selling Prices (ASPs) rose by 21 percent in the third quarter compared to the second, following a 19 percent rise in the second quarter.

    Pricing declined by 10 percent in the first quarter of 2009. The second quarter marked the first sequential increase in DRAM pricing since the fourth quarter of 2006.

    “Third-quarter results from major suppliers show that the DRAM industry recovery is no mirage,” said Mike Howard, senior analyst, DRAM, for iSuppli.

    “The continued increase in prices comes as another indicator that the DRAM market is emerging from what has been a long and painful slump.”

    iSuppli says the global DRAM market has been declining on an annual basis since 2007. Revenue decreased by 7.5 percent in 2007 and plunged by 25.1 percent in 2008.

    Despite the strong recovery in the second and third quarters, extremely weak conditions in the first quarter mean that global DRAM market revenue is set to decrease by 12.9 percent in 2009, according to the company’s preliminary estimate.

    The market’s strong performance in the second and third quarters likely presage continued strength in the DRAM market.

    “Third-quarter earnings from Samsung, Micron and the Taiwanese DRAM manufacturers point to increasing sales and further progress toward profitability,” Howard said.

    “Samsung achieved profitability during the third quarter, while Micron’s results indicate the company is on its way back to the black. Recent sales results from the Taiwanese DRAM companies are also positive for DRAM. Collectively, the five Taiwanese DRAM suppliers—Inotera, Nanya, Powerchip, ProMOS and Winbond—saw monthly revenues increase rise by 15 percent per month for the last three months.”

    iSuppli expects supply levels to remain fairly consistent in the fourth quarter. DRAM demand is expected to improve in 2010 in concert with the general global economic recovery.

  • Transformational Impact of Server Virtualization on IT Infrastructure

    A recent IDC survey investigating server virtualization deployments in various organizations reveals that the technology is transforming server, storage, and networking infrastructure and even more so the way their datacenters are and will be built and managed.

    "The accelerated adoption of virtualization is making the technology a crucial factor, changing buying behavior and deployments of customers throughout Europe," said Nathaniel Martinez, program director for IDC’s European Enterprise Servers group.

    According to him, customers are not only rapidly exploiting new and emerging virtualization functions such as high availability and VM mobility, they are also slowly adapting their infrastructure to virtualization requirements.

    “This in turn drives the acquisition of richer configured servers, expansion in fiber channel SANs, increased spending on iSCSI-based storage, and a boost in NAS adoption in large hosting environments," Martinez added.

    The survey also suggests that many users are pushing their virtual server environments to the limits, which is causing several problems, such as virtual server sprawl and storage I/O bottlenecks.

    22% of all survey respondents claim to have had I/O problems within the past six months and this number jumps to 40% of respondents that fit into the early adopter category.

    "Costs are obviously an important factor, but many storage administrators are looking for ways to ensure that storage supporting virtual server environments can meet current and future performance needs," said Eric Sheppard, program director for IDC’s European Storage service.

    The study, Status of x86 virtualization in European Organizations is based on a survey conducted among current server virtualization users in the U.K., Germany, and France.