There have been many criticisms thrown at IT practitioners over the years, but indifference to their discipline is not one of them.

While they often find themselves teased for taking too deep an interest in technology and its application, the furious pace of change in IT and its high impact on business, society and the individual makes that a bearable side effect.

This enthusiasm can cloud judgement, though. Some find it difficult to take a level-headed view of the technologies that actually work for the business – solving business problems, creating strategic value, opening up new revenue opportunities. And when hit daily with waves of marketing from the technology industry, their task of making an impartial assessment of IT is harder still.

A case in point is x86 server virtualisation. Over the past 12 months, adoption of the technology has soared. Indeed, at Information Age round-table discussions throughout last year, readers often cited the considerable potential for virtualisation to strip out IT costs and deliver a more flexible infrastructure for the business. This is all well and good, but it remains self-evident that early adopters, with a vested interest in promoting strategies they have chosen, will talk up a subject.

Enthusiasm for virtualisation is reminiscent of the almost religious zeal that used to surround open-source software or even Unix hardware before that. But does such enthusiasm reflect the true value that virtualisation technology can deliver to the enterprise?

This is exactly the sort of question that Information Age’s annual Effective IT Survey sets out to answer. The survey is the industry’s most comprehensive piece of research on the technologies that IT decision-makers have actively deployed in the enterprise. More importantly, it identifies the ones that really make a big impact while weeding out the ones that don’t.

Happily for the virtualisation zealot, this year’s survey seems to substantiate their buying decision. The vast majority of adopters are convinced of its effectiveness, and even those who have yet to adopt virtualisation are promising to do so soon.

But the research has additional benefits that flow from its four-year lifespan. Historical comparisons allow us to see that the ardour for open-source development, for example, has cooled. It seems to have become just another tool for the IT professional to utilise in their effort to deliver business value.

We hope this special edition of Information Age, dedicated to the effectiveness of IT, puts in perspective the success – or otherwise – of the technologies that you and your peers have implemented or earmarked for implementation. It might even prove suitable ammunition against technology sceptics.