Firms say: Virtualisation now, cloud computing later

Global survey shows more than half of businesses moving to virtualised servers, and an increasing number pondering cloud

Forrester : More than half of firms are virtualising x86 servers

More than half of US and European businesses have already implemented x86 server virtualisation or plan to do so within the next year, according to Forrester Research.

The analyst's survey also showed five per cent of firms investing in hosted virtual servers on a pay-per-use basis, with three per cent implementing this cloud computing model in the next year. The figures for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are two per cent now and two per cent next year.

"Firms large and small are in the midst of rethinking and overhauling IT infrastructure and client systems, with new approaches for greater flexibility, efficiency, and performance," said Forrester vice president and principal analyst Frank Gillett.

Forrester's survey also suggests that firms are "feeling real pain over the costs of maintaining PCs", with 70 per cent of organisations and 74 per cent of SMEs hoping to cut costs using desktop and client virtualisation.

Although 81 per cent of enterprises indicated some level of interest in dealing with datacentre energy efficiency, only 18 per cent said they were very interested in actually doing it.

The survey polled 2,600 technology decision makers in the US and Europe to assess emerging hardware trends in enterprises and SMEs.