ABOUT 492 organizations in the Philippines polled by VMWare Inc. expect to be at least 30-percent virtualized in two years.
VMware’s latest survey showcase Philippines businesses at the leading edge of technology adoption in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations with over 79 percent respondents expecting to be at least 30-percent virtualized in two years, the company’s statement said. The findings further highlight businesses in the highly virtualized category to more than double from existing 17 percent to 44 percent by 2017, it added.
VMware explained its findings came from a poll of 623 business and information technology (IT) managers and decision makers from January to February.
“The positive virtualization trends in Philippines would mean long-term business savings,” VMware said, citing the International Data Corp. (IDC) datacenter economies index (DEI).
The IDC DEI estimated that businesses in the Asia-Pacific region would be able to avoid $92.4 million in costs between 2014 and 2020 as a result of virtualization of compute, storage and networking hardware and leveraging a software-defined approach to managing IT. The savings, according to the same study, would come from four key areas of hardware ($40.04 million); real estate and maintenance ($1.97 million); administration ($35.9 million); and power and cooling ($14.6 million); just from 2014 to 2020.
“As one of the most social and mobile markets in the region, the Philippines’s on-demand and hyper-connected work force is changing the marketplace to one that is increasingly fluid and instant. It has become imperative for businesses in the Philippines to look to technology and effectively leverage the cloud to stay competitive,” VMware Philippines Country Manager Emmanuel Portugal said.
VMware said the attraction to virtualization and to its added technology advantages created a strong focus on turning to software-defined data centers (SDDC).
“In the quest for productivity amongst businesses, organizations in the Philippines that can rapidly provision new services in a secure and highly available environment, while scaling dynamically as the business grows in a cost-effective manner, will in turn be able to succeed in this new era.”
Other key findings from VMware Philippines business survey revealed that businesses expect software-defined data centers to improve operational efficiency and optimize resource utilization:
Improve operational efficiency (35 percent); and optimize resource utilization (30 percent); were identified as the key drivers for adopting software-defined data centers
There is a paradigm shift in the IT expectations of enterprises from being just a productivity and efficiency driver to a catalyst in achieving business outcomes. With measures to continuously drive economic growth and challenges, including lesser resources such as land and manpower, businesses in the Philippines need to consider adopting technologies, such as virtualization and software-defined data centers for operational efficiency and better resource utilization. This storage efficiency factor from virtualization has allowed less physical storage capacity to be purchased. From this reduction in physical storage required, more savings in hardware spending, and reduction in costs from power and cooling, data center space and storage administration can also be realized.
Other key findings from VMware Philippines business survey revealed that information technology security, disaster recovery and enterprise-cost reduction are key business priorities for this year.
Thirty-four percent of Philippine businesses define providing IT security and data protection as top IT priorities for this year. The other two priorities the respondents identified are on disaster recovery and business continuity (31 percent of respondents) and reduction of enterprise costs (23 percent).
Costs, business culture and lack of information as top barriers to adoption
Costs (45 percent); business culture (25 percent); followed by lack of information (22 percent); were identified as the top barriers to adoption of software-defined data centers
Beyond costs, another significant challenge to organizations looking to adopt newer technologies is culture. This issue is apparent when examining the results of the IDC Asia/Pacific Transformative Infrastructure Index, which showed strong “interest” around a myriad of new technologies, and lesser focus on the execution of a business-aligned strategic IT projects. While many would argue that this issue stems from insufficient funds, this ‘lack of funds’ can also be attributed to “attitude.” If there is greater alignment of the IT projects to measurable business outcomes, then the ability of organizations to find the necessary funds to deliver on some of these capabilities will increase.