CA Announces Key Findings of Global Virtualization Management Study

Worldwide, 54% of large enterprises rate management of their virtual server environment as a critical or high IT priority, yet only 45% think their companies are doing an effective job in this important area. This is a key finding of a recent independent global study on virtualization management sponsored by CA (NYSE: CA). The study, which surveyed 300 CIOs and other top IT executives at companies in the U.S., EMEA and APAC with more than $250 million in annual revenue, revealed that servers, storage and applications are the most important areas to virtualize. Respondents report the most success in virtualizing servers. Fifty six percent of respondents are using multiple platforms/vendors for server virtualization management, while 35% are standardized on one platform. Sixty eight percent of the respondents rate the importance of centralizing the management of multi-platform virtualized or physical environments as critical or very important. "Successful management of the virtualization infrastructure is essential in order to optimize technology initiatives, enable documented returns on investments and enhance productivity across the enterprise,” said Paula Daley, vice president of product marketing at CA. "IT executives must go beyond relying on an assortment of point platform-based management tools to one that centralizes virtual, physical and clustered environments. Doing so will increase their confidence in managing virtual server environments, reduce complexity, improve operational efficiency, and ensure that IT investments are optimized and generating competitive advantages for the business.” The study found that the most important capabilities when managing a server virtualization environment are performance/utilization, security and automation. It also revealed the top benefits experienced as a result of server virtualization initiatives are easier hardware provisioning and software deployment, more flexible development and testing environments, and optimizing system performance. Respondents rated security as the most significant challenge when managing server virtualization initiatives. Measuring return on investment is also a critical management challenge. Just 28% of respondents worldwide have a method in place to measure the ROI on virtualization solutions, yet 51% indicate they are extremely confident or confident that their companies are maximizing the return on virtualization investments. Over the next 18 months, the percent of respondents in each region using virtualization in production to support non-mission critical and mission-critical applications, as well as the percent using virtualization to support business continuity/disaster recovery is expected to increase. The top five mission-critical business services to be used in virtual environments are IT infrastructure, customer service, accounting/finance, data analytics, and application development. An executive summary of the survey results is available at http://www.ca.com/about/virtual_survey. About CA CA (NYSE: CA), one of the world’s largest independent software companies, provides software solutions to unify and simplify™ IT management. With CA’s Enterprise IT Management (EITM) vision and expertise, organizations can more effectively govern, manage and secure IT to optimize business performance and sustain competitive advantage. Founded in 1976, CA serves customers in virtually every country in the world. For more information, please visit www.ca.com. Copyright © 2008 CA. All Rights Reserved. One CA Plaza, Islandia, N.Y. 11749. All trademarks, trade names, service marks, and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies.