Research Analyst firm Enterprise Management Associates® (EMA™) and Infoblox Inc. today announced results of a recent survey assessing the impact of cross-team collaboration on virtual machine (VM) deployments.
The survey results reveal that VM deployments require significant involvement across multiple IT departments, not just the server virtualization team, including datacenter/systems administration (physical infrastructure), networking operations, network/application security, storage, and application support (deployment and operations).
More than 40% of survey respondents indicated that their organizations were provisioning 500 or more VMs per month, with some reporting provisioning as many as 5,000 VMs in a month. This volume of VM deployment is a recipe for stress across the enterprise, but particularly among the various groups whose efforts must align and mesh to assure successful deployments.
The majority of survey respondents described overall collaboration across the VM lifecycle as formalized, but manual. This translates into higher-touch and less efficient processes than those that have employed automated approaches. If VM deployments continue to occur at accelerating rates, higher levels of efficiency will be required to ensure timely and properly configured VMs.
“Server virtualization is on the rise and cloud applications will continue to fuel their growth. The more manual the VM lifecycle processes are, the more prone they are to delays and errors. The purpose of moving to virtualized infrastructures is to speed up the deployment and provisioning processes,” said Tracy Corbo, Principal Research Analyst at Enterprise Management Associates. “The VM deployment and provisioning process demands cross-team collaboration and it requires breaking down the silos and implementing cross-domain tools.”
Most respondents agreed that integrated multi-disciplinary IT teams, additional staff, and fully automated, cross-domain orchestration tools would help accelerate the end-to-end VM deployment process. However, when participants were asked to name the greatest inhibitors preventing more proactive (vs. reactive) cross-team collaboration, the majority (57%) said they were just too busy and understaffed.
“The survey clearly shows that enterprise IT team members acknowledge that cross-team coordination, communication, and collaboration tools are required to improve IT team efficiency and virtual deployment success,” said Steve Garrison, Infoblox Vice President of Corporate Marketing. “More than ever, Infoblox solutions are clearly aligned with the needs of the marketplace through our ability to provide network control and automation solutions that significantly reduce the need for highly manual, repetitive, and often error-prone tasks that can create ‘drag’ in virtual deployments.”
For example, Infoblox announced today new automated network control capabilities and an intuitive Automation Task Board designed to enable various IT department members to initiate multi-step, often-repeated, and time-consuming network tasks with simple mouse clicks, all while providing cross-team visibility and auditability (see related announcement: Infoblox Bridges Siloed IT Structures and Delivers Operational Efficiencies Required to Maximize Cloud Computing Deployments).
To view detailed survey results visit: http://www.infoblox.com/en/resources/network-automation-center.html.