Business of all sizes rapidly moving towards IT consolidation 24 May, 2010 By Mark Cox

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The survey confirms that businesses of all sizes are moving to consolidate IT resources in an effort to reduce costs and simplify management. Over 350 Interop attendees were surveyed during the three-day exhibition in Las Vegas. The survey results reveal that organizations are rapidly moving towards virtualization and IT consolidation, with 65 percent of those surveyed responding that they have already begun the process of creating a centralized IT environment.

When asked in what ways they have created a centralized IT environment, 43 percent of respondents revealed that they have already begun implementing private cloud projects, where IT resources are being consolidated or virtualized to the data center. The three primary motivating factors for IT consolidation projects cited by respondents included: reducing costs (listed by 64 percent of respondents), reducing management and complexity (39 percent), and increasing security (32 percent).

In addition to consolidation to private cloud environments, organizations are also spearheading efforts to consolidate branch office infrastructure. 14 percent of respondents indicated that they are virtualizing and consolidating resources within the branch office. Another 35 percent of respondents revealed that they will begin branch office consolidation projects by 2011.

In the survey, the top two concerns cited by organizations looking to consolidate their IT environments included performance, which was named as a top concern by 67 percent of respondents, and security, which was listed by 53 percent. Data availability (27 percent) and migration difficulties (15 percent) rounded out the primary concerns regarding the implementation of IT consolidation and virtualization projects.

"The Interop audience draws a wide spectrum of IT professionals that cover networking, applications and storage markets, much like our customer base," said Apurva Davé, vice president of product marketing for Riverbed. "The responses from the Interop survey match what we hear from our customers, namely that cloud computing, virtualization and consolidation are strategic IT initiatives for many organizations."

Other findings of the survey include:

Network and Application Visibility -- 31 percent of respondents are planning on deploying network and application visibility solutions by 2011.