Virtualisation off to slow start in India

As they grow, companies add servers, storage and networking gear to manage rising demand for computing resources. They typically buy hardware to handle peak workloads, for example, to manage quarterly or yearly spurt in demand for processing power to close books.

But as peak workloads usually occur sporadically, expensive hardware remains severely under utilised in most companies. According to estimates, companies on an average use just 5 to 15 percent of their server capacity.

Virtualisation helps companies utilise hardware capacity better by creating multiple virtual machines, which run on existing physical servers. So, as a company expands, instead of buying new hardware, it can create virtual machines to manage new workload. 
 
Rakesh Kumar, Vice President, Gartner Research told Deccan Herald that level of virtualization is very low in India as companies here have a better track record of utilising their IT assets. “As there is less fat the financial incentive to virtualise is low,” he said. 
 
Aman Munglani, Principal Analyst, Gartner, said on an average the level of virtualization in Indian companies stands between 10 to 20 percent, but is spreading in companies, which have deployed the popular X-86 servers.

In the past few years Indian companies have invested heavily in X-86 servers and are hence facing the problem of their under utilisation. The large companies in banking, telecom and manufacturing industries were the early adopters of virtualization.

But the technology has now spread to all industry segments and even reaching smaller companies. Munglani points out that you may even come across a few companies which have virtualised up to 60 percent of their IT assets. 

For companies to reap full benefits of this technology, virtualization has to go beyond servers and reach storage and networking resources. But Munglani said in India storage virtualization is not happening as the IT infrastructure has not reached the level of complexity that may compel it.

It is also a very expensive proposition and not many companies can afford the software cost associated with storage virtualization. Instead companies are opting to consolidate storage resources to ensure ease of management and migration of data, he added. 

As companies virtualise servers, they face an exploding demand for storage. Meeting the storage demands of new virtual machines is another impediment for X-86 virtualisation, Munglani said.