Virtualisation tops IT priority list

Virtualisation and virtual working will have the biggest impact on the IT industry in future, a new IT Week reader poll has revealed.

IT Week carried out the survey to mark its 10-year anniversary this week, questioning 620 UK IT managers on the biggest IT developments and issues from the past decade and going forwards.

When asked to choose the three technologies or trends that would have the most impact on the industry in the future, more than half of respondents cited virtualisation. This was followed by 43 per cent for virtual working and 38 per cent for green IT.

Richard Dawson, IT services manager at Bracknell Forest Borough Council, agreed that virtualisation will have a huge impact going forwards.

“We’ve taken the VMware route to help reduce the cost of our server estate,” he explained. “This has also led to a reduction in power and CO2 that dovetails with the council’s green agenda. Within one year we have virtualised 140 servers – we have even accelerated the project to take advantage of the savings.”

The survey results also reflected the importance of India and China as future industry power-houses: just over a third of readers rated the growing influence of these nations as a top-three issue.

Broadband emerged as the most important technology development by far looking back over the past decade, rated in the top three by almost three-quarters of readers. The importance of the internet was also reflected by the half of respondents who rated e-commerce as a key development, while a third chose the launch of Google.

Surprisingly, the rise of mobile working and the BlackBerry came lower in the rankings, gaining 25 per cent and 18 per cent of the vote respectively – despite handhelds and laptops being the tools of choice for many corporates.

IT Week readers rated reducing costs and security as their biggest priorities at present – both areas that have been a constant concern for IT chiefs.

“Security has always been high on our agenda due to the types of public information that we deal with,” Dawson said. “While the recent data leaks have meant we are still maintaining a high level of security, costs have not significantly increased - although we are looking at new encryption tools for securing laptops and USB devices.”

At the lower end of the scale, only 14 per cent of respondents rated IT recruitment and staffing as a current issue, indicating that IT Week readers are not concerned about filling vacancies or finding skilled staff at present.

When it came to predictions for the most influential or successful IT vendors over the next decade, Microsoft and Google both scored very highly compared to the rest of the industry – a comforting thought for Microsoft attempting to assert its authority over rival Google in the new web-based world, while maintaining its desktop dominance.