CIOs look to virtualise storage

While more than half of surveyed IT managers believe storage virualisation is the way forward, just 27 per cent are actively implementing the technology at their own company, a new survey has found.

A survey of attendees to Gartner's IT Expo by ONStor showed that 56 per cent of respondents think virtualisation is worth deploying. Some 40 per cent said traditional storage methods would only meet their data requirements for the next year.

The also saw other benefits, including data availability, flexibility, and cost savings.

Marcos Burnett, UK country manager at ONStor, said: "What has been highlighted in our research is that the boardroom has become virtualisation-savvy."

Despite this, just 27 per cent of respondents were implementing the technology. Earlier this year, a Forrester analyst called takeup of virtualisation in storage "tepid".

The research also showed that the overwhelming majority - some 90 per cent - of respondents expected their storage systems to be perfectly compatible with virtualisation market leader VMware and other such vendors.

Marcos said: "The overwhelming sentiment from our research is that storage must offer a high value price for performance ratio. With several types of storage available, only vendors that truly demonstrate competitive advantage will remain as virtualisation continues to expand market share."