Virtualisation may promise to solve some of the problems of overcrowded data centres, but many IT managers are reluctant to trust the technology, regarding it as over-hyped and confusing to manage, a survey has found.

Virtualisation seeks to abolish the one-to-one relationship between applications and servers which has evolved in many data centres.

The technology enables hardware resources to be devoted dynamically to business processes, regardless of which applications they involve and on which servers they run.

Virtualisation promises to reduce the number of servers required to meet business need, make IT operations more efficient and service-oriented, reduce complexity and help tackle the growing problem of power consumption and heat dissipation.

But a survey released today by systems integrator Morse suggests that IT managers are afraid of downtime jeopardising live systems and are steering clear of virtualisation technologies. 

Only 29 per cent of the 100 IT directors surveyed by Vanson Bourne said they were using virtualisation in live business critical environments, citing the threat to live systems as the main reason for avoiding the technology. 

Financial services organisations, unsurprisingly, are even more risk-adverse: 81 per cent said they were not using virtualisation technology throughout the business because of the perceived risks.

"It is unfortunate that the very organisations that stand to get the most out of virtualisation have yet to embrace it from a strategic standpoint," said Scott Reynolds, a consultant at Morse.

"It is a hugely beneficial technology that can help businesses cut costs in the data centre and make the whole IT environment much simpler and easier to manage."