Staying ahead of the pack - Contact Management

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Study finds IT teams adopting
virtualization, cloud computing
Late last year, networking provider Cisco, San Jose, CA,
released the final installment of the Cisco Connected
World Report, an international study on the behavioural
trends of workers in accessing information anywhere, with
any device, and the ability of information technology (IT)
professionals to address their needs. The latest results
focus on data centre, virtualization, and cloud computing
trends, and evolving IT roles, in the context of increasingly
mobile and distributed workforces.
The study found that global IT professionals are creating
new job opportunities by increasing collaboration among
teams in the data centre, and adopting new technologies
such as virtualization and cloud computing. But they are
also struggling to maintain security and data governance
as employees demand more offsite access to networks and
information.
For example, across the 13 countries in the global
study, 52 percent of the IT professionals stated they use
or plan to use cloud computing, while much higher cloud
adoption rates are predicted in Brazil (70 percent), China
(69 percent) and India (76 percent). Across the world,
respondents rated the following as their top data centre
priorities for the next three years:
• improve agility and speed in deploying business
applications (33 percent),
• better manage resource capacity to align demand and
capacity (31 percent),
• increase data centre resilience (19 percent),
• reduce power and cooling costs (17 percent).
These findings add to the initial survey results
released in October, which revealed that workers want
flexible access to corporate information from any mobile
device, anywhere, anytime, and to the results released
in November, which revealed disconnects in worker
expectations around information access, IT policies and
employee awareness of policies. The latest survey results
examine how IT managers are evolving their data centres
and taking advantage of new technologies, while working
to accommodate trends in the workplace like social media,
device proliferation, video and an increasingly mobile
workforce.
Across the study’s 13 countries, only an average of18
percent of respondents are using cloud computing today,
while an additional 34 percent plan to use the cloud. Brazil
(27 percent), Germany (27 percent), India (26 percent),
U.S. (23 percent) and Mexico (22 percent) top the list
of countries that are already taking advantage of cloud
computing, exceeding the average (18 percent) across all
countries. A large majority (88 percent) of IT respondents
predict they will be storing some percentage of their
company’s data and applications in private or public clouds
within the next three years.
One in three IT professionals said more than half of their
company’s data and applications will be in private clouds
within the next three years. Private cloud adoption was
predicted to be higher in Mexico (71 percent), Brazil (53
Lew Tucker, Cisco’s chief technology officer, cloud
computing, says the latest installment of the Cisco study
demonstrates IT professionals worldwide are embracing
new technologies such as virtualization and cloud
computing while helping their companies meet their
businesses goals.
percent) and the U.S. (46 percent.)
Of those respondents that will use public clouds, one
of every three (34 percent) plan to deploy within one year,
and 44 percent predicted their companies would use public
clouds within the next two years; 21 percent are expected
to do so within two to three years.
Server virtualization is not yet widespread in production
and nonproduction environments. Only 29 percent of
the respondents worldwide have more than half their
production servers virtualized, and only 28 percent have
more than half of nonproduction servers virtualized.
IT professionals cited an increase in IT agility (30
percent) as the top reason to deploy virtualization, followed
by the ability to optimize resources to reduce costs (24
percent) and by faster application provisioning (18 percent).
The picture changes over the next three years. Almost
half of the IT respondents (46 percent) expect that 50 to
100 percent of their production environment servers will
be virtualized.
They see big savings from virtualization with 40 percent
of respondents expecting a data centre cost reduction
of between 25 and 49 percent, and another 30 percent
anticipating up to 24 percent in cost savings.
“The data centre is evolving to meet employee
expectations for accessing networks, applications and
information anywhere at any time with any device,”
says Lew Tucker, Cisco’s chief technology officer, cloud
computing. “The third installment of the Cisco Connected
World Report demonstrates that IT professionals worldwide
are embracing new technologies such as virtualization,
cloud computing, desktop virtualization, and unified data
centre infrastructure to meet employee expectations while
helping their companies meet their businesses goals.”
Goldbeck
Recruiting
forms IT and
Telecom
division
Goldbeck Recruiting Inc., Vancouver,
a major recruitment and executive
search firm in BC, late last year
launched its new recruitment
division specializing in Information
Technology jobs.
The new IT and Telecom division
will cover all IT related fields such as
networking, software engineering,
programming, R&D, and IT project
management. It will also include sales
and marketing positions in IT and
telecommunications industries.
“We are giving this sector the
attention it deserves,” says Henry
Goldbeck, president of Goldbeck
Recruiting. “The timing of our launch
has been fuelled by an increase
in client requests. To meet the
demands of this industry, we are also
expanding our recruitment services
to include contract positions.”
Julia MacKenzie has joined
Goldbeck Recruiting as the new
division’s lead recruiter. Her strong
business development background
and networking experience with
senior level executives of Fortune
500 companies will be critical to the
growth of this new division.
Henry Goldbeck, president of
Goldbeck Recruiting, says the launch
of the new division was fuelled by an
increase in client requests.
10 contact management.ca March / April 2011