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Virtualisation is key growth market during recession

by Scott Bicheno on 11 August 2009, 11:21

Tags: Hitachi (TYO:6501)

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Virtual reality

Hitachi Data Systems (HDS), the storage solutions subsidiary of Hitachi, recently conducted a survey of its UK partners, which provides a snapshot of their expectations for the UK channel over the next year. The long and short of it is that IT budgets are, unsurprisingly, being kept to a minimum and it looks like staying that way for a while.

Harvey Smith (pictured), UK & Ireland channel sales director at HDS, spoke to HEXUS.channel to offer his perspective on the survey. "People are taking a much more considered approach to capital expenditure," said Smith. "There's a lot of focus on getting the best out of what you've got. Budgets are staying the same, or shrinking."

The good thing about the tech industry is that companies not only invest in it to increase productivity, they also look to technology to save them money. In the current economic climate, the efficiencies created by virtualisation are increasingly appealing to both enterprise and SMEs, with a telling 87 percent of channel respondents saying they expect their customers to invest in virtualisation over the next 12 months.

And this isn't limited to just server virtualisation. Storage virtualisation is also popular as it allows more efficient use of disparate server resources and can help extend the useful life of older storage equipment.

"There's a difference between server and storage virtualisation, with storage virtualisation designed to make many storage systems look like one," said Smith. "A lot of our partners still see the backup and recovery market as one of their top three areas of business."

While it comes as no surprise that cost-cutting is the predominant theme in IT departments these days, and even allowing for any vested interest HDS had in conducting this survey, this is a timely reminder for the channel that it should make sure it can demonstrate pretty rapid ROI on its products and services if it expects customers to spend during the recession.

 



HEXUS Forums :: 8 Comments

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well the storage component of any virtualisation project is critical - I've seen first hand the effects of what can happen when its just assumed that storage will work.
I thought it was key growth market before the recession to be honest.
It was, just with the recession power savings and data centre consolidations have become a focus for a lot of companies.

I've been landed with the job of virtualising our entire production SQL Server environment at the moment, something that 6-12 months ago no one here would ever have contemplated.
shaithis
It was, just with the recession power savings and data centre consolidations have become a focus for a lot of companies.

I've been landed with the job of virtualising our entire production SQL Server environment at the moment, something that 6-12 months ago no one here would ever have contemplated.

good challenge ! :)

just make sure you get the storage right!! , if you've got your SQL drives on SAN already its a lot easier as you could just present the drives to the VM's as RDM's
Yes, about 75% of our databases are spread across various SANs, so even the migration plan is starting to look surprisingly simple :)