Businesses still aren't virtualising core applications

Virtualisation is widely accepted as the way to go in businesses today, yet companies are still holding back on virtualising their core applications.

This was the view expressed by Red Hat at a hosted round table held yesterday in London.

Navin Thadani, senior director of the virtualisation business at Red Hat, said: "Across the board customers understand they should be virtualising... it is a given these days. However only 10 to 30 per cent of applications are virtualised."

When it came to core applications, the outlook was even worse.

"Core applications are just not being virtualised yet," continued Thadani.

He detailed the problems that many companies face when it comes to virtualisation including costs, performance, scalability and security. Customers had even told him that "even if I wanted to virtualise more, my budget doesn't allow me."

Red Hat is hoping to correct these issues with its latest release of Red Hat Virtualisation for Enterprise but the company knows it will not be an easy task.

Thadani concluded: "We've got a lot of work to do to get it out there. Our goal is to get as many references as we can and demonstrate to the market it can be done."