Wednesday, August 31, 2011

25% of Small Businesses Have "Virtualized" Servers


A new study by CDW found that 25 percent of small businesses have virtualized at least some of their servers, attracted by efficiency, cost savings and flexibility to meet changing business demands, and that the average percentage of servers virtualized at those businesses grew steadily from 28 percent to 33 percent between July 1, 2010, and June 30, 2011.  

Even among small businesses that have not yet implemented server virtualization, 73 percent report they are investigating or planning to deploy the technology, with investments averaging 17 percent of their IT budgets over the next two years, CDW says.

On average, small businesses using virtualization are saving 18 percent of their IT budget or $19,400 per year, the report found.

CDW suggests that server virtualization can make sense when there is a need to replace older servers, or when organizations already are running five to seven dedicated servers. Ownership of servers that are lightly used is another instance where virtualization might make sense.

Physical space issues, rising support, energy or real estate costs also can be drivers. Businesses expecting significant growth, or with high needs for application availability and protection from disruption likewise are good candidates for a virtualization approach.

Sponsored by CDW, the survey of 300 small business professionals was conducted by Spiceworks, an IT-focused social network.

1 comment:

Chris Reese said...

While virtualization and cloud are buzzwords today, it always comes back to choosing the right vendors.

Do your homework. Focus on total cost per application. That's the real number.

By choosing the right partner, businesses can reduce server management burdens on existing IT departments, create a more reliable and resilient infrastructure, and reduce operational costs of IT by 20 to 40 percent.

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