Codestone

Category: Virtualisation

Businesses are looking to integrate virtualisation software more than any other technology in the next 12 months, new research has revealed.

A study by Gartner found that of almost 1,600 chief information officers polled, the majority ranked virtualisation as their main priority for 2010, while cloud computing and Web 2.0 followed in second and third places respectively.

According to the analyst, firms are increasingly looking to "lighter-weight" platforms that can help them to reduce costs and improve efficiency while remaining fairly inexpensive to deploy.

Mark McDonald, group vice-president and head of research for Gartner, noted that proper installation of virtualisation programs can change the way an enterprise operates.

He remarked: "Asymmetric technologies like virtualisation … enable companies to get out from under a front-loaded heavy investment model that limits IT’s agility and flexibility."

Gartner recently predicted that technology of this type could lead to a hardware revolution, with 20 per cent of businesses having no IT assets by 2012.