Virtualization is ready to support mission-critical applications, according to a recent customer survey conducted by managed hosting provider Rackspace. The survey revealed that 57% of respondents are already using virtualization for internal applications, and 72% of respondents are comfortable hosting mission-critical applications in a production environment on a virtualized platform.

Almost three-quarters (71%) of respondents said they would host their applications on a virtualized infrastructure with a hosting provider. However, the majority of customers polled are currently not comfortable utilizing a shared, virtual environment. Only 13% of respondents are confidently willing to share a physical server with other hosting customers, a practice common in hosting, with top concerns stemming from performance and security vulnerabilities in shared environments.

"Virtualization is making significant traction in the market; however, it is still a maturing technology," said Nicolas Keller, director of platform products for Rackspace. "The first phase of virtualization has focused on cost savings from server consolidation, but the next phase will be about infrastructure management to improve flexibility and scalability. Hosting providers and utility players need to deliver a virtualization platform that provides fast provisioning and infrastructure agility for customers."

According to company sources, Rackspace plans to unveil a virtualization offering (currently in beta) to address the management of large-scale implementations.

In general, 42% of respondents believe virtualization will have a fundamental impact on information technology. Although 43% had no preference between using open source or proprietary virtualization products, the majority of respondents reported using VMware.

Detailed information and the full survey report in .pdf format can be found here.

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