Increase in demand for virtualization

40% of resellers are experiencing higher demand

Despite a general decline in IT spend, 40 percent of South African resellers are still experiencing an increase in the demand for virtualisation solutions. This is according to the results of a recent channel survey conducted by Citrix Systems.

When asked what this increase in demand could be attributed to, 87 percent of responses indicated the reduction in overall infrastructure costs for customers who implement virtualisation solutions is a key benefit.

“It is extremely encouraging to obtain such feedback from our resellers,” says Nick Keene, country manager, Citrix Systems South Africa. “This demonstrates that there is still a great deal of investment in technology. However, customers are a lot more selective about which areas they invest in, preferring solutions that give them a good return or reduce operating costs.”

The public sector, financial services and insurance sectors still present the greatest opportunity for virtualisation sales in 2009, with server virtualisation still the best seller, followed by application virtualisation. Some resellers are also experiencing a slight increase in demand for desktop virtualisation.

The research also looked at the demand for cloud computing. 53 percent of those surveyed indicated that a major advantage of adopting a cloud computing strategy is that it allows organisations to focus on their core business. The same number identified bandwidth constrains as the main obstacle in the adoption of cloud computing in South Africa.