Performance and security fears leave hosting customers unwilling to share physical server with other virtualisation customers
Virtualisation is ready to support mission-critical applications, according to a recent customer survey conducted by managed hosting provider Rackspace Managed Hosting. The survey revealed that 57 per cent of respondents are already using virtualisation for internal applications, and 72 per cent of respondents are comfortable hosting mission-critical applications in a production environment on a virtualised platform.
There is a great demand for leveraging the benefit of virtualisation through a third-party hosting company: 71 per cent of respondents would host their applications on a virtualised infrastructure with a hosting provider. However, the majority of customers are currently not comfortable utilising a shared, virtual environment. Only 13 per cent of respondents are confidently willing to share a physical server with other hosting customers, a practice common in hosting, with top concerns stemming from performance and security
vulnerabilities in shared environments.
Nicolas Keller, director of platform products, Rackspace Managed Hosting, said: "Virtualisation is making significant traction in the market; however, it is still a maturing technology. This is where Rackspace can fill in the gap by applying Fanatical Support to a solution that people are comfortable with and that will provide peace of mind in areas like performance and security. The first phase of virtualisation has focused on cost savings from server consolidation, but the next phase will be about infrastructure management to improve flexibility and scalability. Hosting providers and utility players, like Rackspace, that manage tens-of-thousands of customer servers, need to deliver a virtualisation platform that provides fast provisioning and infrastructure agility for our customers."
Rackspace plans to unveil a virtualisation offering, which is currently in the beta process, to address the management of large-scale implementations. It will address the needs and concerns that have been revealed through this customer survey.
Keller continues: "We've been researching virtualisation for a while now and wanted to make sure that our customers are ready, that the market is ready and most importantly that our offering is Fanatical Support-ready.
"We are working thoroughly to ensure the management, high availability, performance and security pieces of our virtualisation offering are in
line for a successful launch by the end of this year."
Additionally, the Rackspace survey revealed that 42 per cent of respondents believe virtualisation will have a fundamental impact on information technology. Although 43 per cent had no preference between using open source or proprietary virtualisation products, the majority of respondents use VMware.
The methodology for this research involved sending an email survey to approximately 3,000 Rackspace customers. More than 12 per cent of survey recipients responded to the questions. Detailed information and the full survey report can be found at:
www.rackspace.com/downloads/surveys/VirtualizationSurvey.pdf.
About Rackspace Managed Hosting:
A recognised leader in the global managed hosting market, Rackspace(r) Managed Hosting is a world-class service organisation delivering enterprise-level Web infrastructure and managed services to businesses of all sizes. Serving more than 13,000 customers across eight data centres worldwide, Rackspace integrates the industry's best technologies for each customer's need backed by a 100 per cent network uptime guarantee. Founded in 1998, the company has received numerous awards for its brand of customer service known as Fanatical Support(r) including the Unisys/Management Today 2005 Service Excellence Award. It has also been recognised in the 2007 Financial Times Best Places to work Awards as the most 'fun and friendly' and one of the top two 'most welcoming'
places to work in the UK.
For more information, visit www.rackspace.co.uk or call 0800 085 3973
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