New research from Computer Weekly and TechTarget has shown that attitudes towards server virtualisation within the European networking industry have changed.
Last year's survey revealed the technology was viewed as a strain on networks and not really the problem of networking professionals.The latest results,however,revealed that 44%were expecting to invest in the technology during 2012 and it was an important element of the networking team's job.
Of all the European respondents,60%claimed there would be a rise in spending on network products and services this year,with 12%claiming the rise would be upwards of 25%.
Server virtualisation was the second largest driver towards further investments in 2012 by networking teams,with 19%of respondents saying it would be the area with most time and networking resources spent on it.
It was also one of the highest areas of spend for the total IT budget,rather than just the networking portion,with 19%stating they would spend more on the technologies this year.
Download the Computer Weekly Buyer's Guide to server virtualisation here
To enable stronger deployments of server virtualisation,47%of the respondents were looking at increasing bandwidth within the datacentre and 40%wanted to upgrade network hardware to handle the extra traffic.
Free Download:Full Survey Results
Network Purchasing Intentions 2012
HP,including its acquisitions of 3Com and H3C,was named as the primary network hardware provider,with over 70%using its products.
Only 13%of respondents were looking to change supplier,but more were looking to add to their environment,with Dell and its Force10 products coming top of the list–28%wanted to bring the firm into their datacentres.
However,the area where companies were most likely to switch their hardware waswireless networking,rather than server virtualisation.
Other drivers towards heavier spend in networking this year included network security,named by 17%of respondents,as well as worker productivity and disaster recovery/back-up implementations,cited by 13%of respondents.
