Study Reveals Gap Between Use and Understanding of Virtualization

In an increasingly tech-savvy world, many consumers are familiar with the concepts of cloud computing, Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) and mobility. However, one area that remains ubiquitous is virtualization.

In fact, 40 percent of information workers haven’t even heard of server or desktop virtualization, revealing a large gap between the amount virtualization is used in the workplace and the amount employees understand the technology, according to a new study commissioned by a group of Cisco (News - Alert) partners.

“That’s problematic because public opinion and conventional wisdom often guide CEOs’ and managers’ decision-making,” the report said. “BYOD as policy only really took off after workers demanded en masse that they be allowed to use their own devices for work.”

The study revealed other important findings, including the following:

• 60 percent of respondents said they didn’t know whether their work would benefit from virtualization; that number dropped to zero percent among IT workers.
• 53 percent of non-IT workers thought that remote access capabilities would not make their work any easier, yet 74 percent of workers that could access work files or desktops remotely said that ability was important to their jobs.

Overall, the report indicates that virtualization still hasn’t taken off, which is why it remains so misunderstood.

“A technology must really attain critical mass before it takes off. Virtualization clearly hasn’t reached this stage,” the report concluded. “More broadly, the risk that the technology knowledge gap will widen to the point that CIOs and IT managers operate in an arcane field that few understand is very real.”

Cisco recently announced plans to buy data virtualization company Composite, which is part of a larger Cisco strategy, TMCnet’s Doug Barney recently reported.

In fact, the company recently bought process integration player SolveDirect, and will work to integrate this software with Composite data virtualization to integrate workflows and support cross-domain data.

“Cisco’s strategy is to create a next generation IT model that provides highly differentiated solutions to help solve our customers’ most challenging business problems,” said Gary Moore, Cisco president and chief operating officer. “By combining our network expertise with the performance of Cisco’s Unified Computing System and Composite’s software, we will provide customers with instant access to data analysis for greater business intelligence.”