A Red Flag: Not Enough Attention to Integration

Although almost half of you are shelling out for new tools to ensure that application service levels stay strong, you're not paying enough mind to integrating the teams that run your virtual environments.

Chris Wolf, senior analyst with Burton Group, says it's a problem that so few IT groups have created "center of excellence" teams that bring together experts from across the IT silos. "Some organizations still have the misconception that server virtualization is a server team issue, he says, when in fact server virtualization relies heavily on network and storage integration. Experience helps. "Organizations that have been running virtualization in production for one or more years understand the need for a center of excellence," says Wolf.

No Consultants, Please

Virtualization expertise represents a precious commodity today: Most CIOs struggle to find enough of it. But you're not using consultants as widely as you did with the last wave of technology change—the ERP makeovers and CRM implementations. Why? "One CIO recently told me that he loves virtualization because 'It just works,'" says IDC's Elliot. That means less work for consultants. But it's hard to learn as you go with virtualization, adds Burton Group senior analyst Chris Wolf: A consultant can help you avoid blunders like security mistakes, he says.