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With IT decision makers looking for ways to optimise and consolidate their data centres, reduce costs and improve efficiencies, many are turning to virtualisation, cloud computing and software-defined technologies to help them get more value out of their existing assets while improving agility.

The Virtual Instruments survey found that 86 per cent of respondents agree that an IPM solution can help improve the IT department’s performance in terms of meeting the needs of the business.

In addition 79 per cent of respondents agree that an Infrastructure Performance Management (IPM) solution can improve the agility of the IT department; 70 per cent think that it can reduce the risks of IT failures within their businesses; and 59 per cent agree that it can reduce the costs of running their IT departments. Nonetheless a significant proportion (two out of five) of respondents feel unhappy with the tools they currently have in place to identify performance issues associated with their IT infrastructures.

“As CIOs and IT managers grapple with the growing demands placed on their infrastructures, infrastructure performance management is more of a priority than ever before. Clearly, these decision makers recognise that IPM tools are business critical, not just to improve their own working environments, but for the overall success of the organisation,” said Chris James, Marketing Director EMEA at Virtual Instruments.

Lack of understanding
There are a number of driving forces contributing to clarity in the monitoring of a data centre today. Additional layers of abstraction and virtualisation that characterise today’s complex enterprise data center make it difficult to see clearly into the underlying infrastructure, and impossible to actually guarantee performance.

While those surveyed recognise the value of IPM, there remains a lack of understanding around its functionality. Only around one third (35 per cent) of respondents say they understand how an IPM solution might help them to understand and resolve infrastructure performance issues associated with virtual and cloud/managed service environments.

Just 13 per cent of respondents say they have a dedicated IPM team at present. Of those who don’t only 23 per cent currently have plans to create a dedicated IPM team.