The Results Are In: IT Professionals Manage Data Centers with Diverse Hypervisors and Multiple Security Concerns

The number of organizations with the majority of servers virtualized will double in 18 months to 51% of all data centers

With Virtualization exploding we wanted to find out what IT Professionals were doing regarding their own virtualized data center, their plans and the impact of virtualization on their security. Some information we learned:

Diverse, Growing, Virtualized Environments

• Virtualization is accelerating: The number of sites that have virtualized a majority of their servers will double in the next 18 months from 26% to 51%.
• Organizations have heterogeneous virtualization platforms
• Microsoft is making inroads — 25% today are using Microsoft HyperV along with other systems

Security Is Not Keeping Up

Only 30% of the respondents claim they have never failed an audit.

• 55% have security concerns but are proceeding with virtualization anyway — the pressure to reduce costs in the current climate may trump proper enterprise controls
• 40% are sharing root passwords — a practice that can result in accidental or malicious compromising of anything from credit card data to intellectual property
• 69% suspect they have orphaned accounts on their servers — leaving them somewhat blind to specifically who has access to what systems

About the Survey

Conducted between August 12 and August 21, the survey "Virtual Data Centers — Market Dynamics and Security" was conducted under the auspices of an independent research firm. Over 30,000 IT professionals were invited to participate, representing a broad range of industries. All told, 531 respondents answered one or more survey questions and 480 completed the survey. At no time was Centrify identified as the sponsor of the research.

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Allison Watson
Vice President
Worldwide Partner Sales and Marketing
Microsoft Corp.