Were it not already abundantly clear, Information Age’s Effective IT 2008 Survey proved that virtualisation is this year’s hottest technology.

Server virtualisation and storage virtualisation both featured among the top three strategies rated most effective by respondents. Storage virtualisation was this year’s most effective strategy, with nearly 85% of adopters describing it as either effective or very effective.

Furthermore, while storage virtualisation only ranked as the 11th most frequently adopted, it led the field in technologies that respondents intend to deploy. Nearly a quarter of respondents (23%) said they planned to implement the technology within the next 12 months.

Last year, server virtualisation was the 11th most adopted strategy but it climbed to fifth in this year’s survey. It was ranked third for effectiveness, with 81% of respondents believing it to be effective or very effective.

Deploying a unified IP network split the virtualisation technologies in the effectiveness rankings. Nearly half of all respondents (49%) have embarked on this strategy, with 83% reporting it to be effective or very effective.

The other top performer in terms of effectiveness was the strategy of supporting mobile working – a perennial high scorer. It has now been the most widely adopted strategy for three years in succession – and this year it was ranked as the fourth most effective.

Open commotion

The most marked fluctuations in opinion between last year’s survey and this year’s concerned open-source software. The application of the Linux operating system in the data centre was the strategy that fell furthest in its effectiveness ranking – last year’s eighth most effective strategy became this year’s 17th.

This could be the opposite reaction to the increased popularity of virtualisation. Perhaps when compared to the improvements in server utilisation and cost control that virtualisation brings to the data centre, the cost savings of using the open-source operating system look comparatively weak.

There were further signs of a dwindling appetite for open-source software. Last year the use of open-source apps ranked as the eighth most highly adopted strategy; this year it was the least adopted of all.

The one area in which open-source showed significant increases in uptake was on the desktop. It rocketed from the second least adopted strategy a year ago up to 12th this year. Furthermore, nearly 35% of those that had adopted Linux on the desktop rated it as very effective; a further 33% rated it as effective.

There are two possible explanations: the daunting prospect of upgrading the desktop estate to the latest iteration of Microsoft’s Windows operating system, Vista, may have convinced some to look for cheaper alternatives; and the growing maturity of Ubuntu may be a factor in persuading organisations to deploy Linux on the desktop.

Demand for on-demand

Adopting software-as-a-service (SaaS) was included as a strategy in the survey for the first time this year, replacing its predecessor of using an application service provider (ASP). Although the two are similar, improvements on the delivery model made by SaaS providers, such as more sophisticated web application functionality, are appreciated by IT managers.

Using an ASP was ranked sixth from bottom in effectiveness last year, while using SaaS was this year at number eight, with 70% of those who adopted it describing it as effective or very effective.

In a similar vein, one strategy stood out for apparently being underappreciated: the use of on-demand utility data processing had the highest effectiveness rating relative to its adoption level of all technologies included in this year’s survey. Only 10% of respondents had adopted the strategy, but over 60% of them thought it was either effective or very effective. This put it higher than ITIL, SOA and information lifecycle management (ILM) in terms of perceived effectiveness.

Other significant movers include master data management (MDM), a strategy that moved nine places up the effectiveness rankings between this year and last to reach 11th place. Curiously, that was accompanied by a slight dip in its adoption ranking, dropping four places. MDM, it seems, is still too daunting an undertaking for many organisations, despite the benefits experienced by those that have taken the plunge.

Elsewhere, the bottom of the effectiveness rankings looked familiar. Outsourcing, offshore development/business process outsourcing (BPO) and reducing IT staffing costs were again the strategies found to be the least effective.

It is possible that an ingrained bias against outsourcing leads to its low ranking – after all, IT professionals may be unfavourably disposed towards strategies that could see them lose their jobs. Nevertheless, over the years of conducting the survey these strategies have been so consistently panned that it suggests there may be significant failings with them.

This widespread antipathy has done little to discourage the adoption of such strategies. Traditional outsourcing languished second from bottom in the adoption rankings, but offshore development/BPO and reducing IT staff costs sat mid table, at 14th and 15th in the adoption rankings respectively.

These statistics suggest that IT departments are still struggling to be seen as potential revenue generators, not just cost centres. Small wonder, then, that the strategy of appointing an IT/business alignment manager is moving up the tables for both adoption and effectiveness, this year breaking into the top 10 for both.

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