Research by HP, surveying the attitudes of 501 CIOs and IT Directors across Europe, reveals that while virtualisation adoption rates are high, its full potential has yet to be unlocked.

The research findings also suggest that the full potential of virtualisation to deliver business benefits it still not clearly understood. The level of confidence in virtualisation to deliver real business benefits is not very high with only 32 percent of respondents seeing it as competitive advantage. This is due to organisations facing a number of challenges to the successful adoption of virtualisation such as getting the right management and governance policy, which were cited by more than a third of companies. “There is no doubt that CIOs are seeing some of the benefits of virtualisation. However, the focus on cost reduction indicates that many organisations are not harnessing the full power of virtualisation. Investing in long-term strategic management policies and governance processes is urgently needed to translate short-term return on investment into long term business benefits. We believe that it’s time to rethink virtualisation in business terms and invest in long-term strategic management policies and governance processes to realise long-term business benefits,” said,” said Alfred Steinecker, Director, Enterprise Server and Storage Software, HP EMEA, HP.