The research, carried out by Vanson Bourne on behalf of IT consultancy Morse, took in responses from 100 IT directors with UK enterprises each employing more than 3 000 staff.

The financial imperative driving the rapid take-up of virtual servers and other virtual resources means that companies are losing touch with what virtual systems they have on their IT systems.

Slightly more than half (51 percent) of enterprises admitted they have not had time to adjust their data centre management strategy to meet the challenges posed by a virtualised environment.

Vanson Bourne also found that, whilst 56 percent of enterprises said they had a system in place to keep track of their virtual machines, 67 per cent admitted that they did not know exactly how many their company was running.

Commenting on the results of the survey, Tom Brand, a senior consultant at Morse, says that, as more and more businesses adopt virtualisation, it is essential that they take a strategic and more disciplined approach and don't just expect how they are managing their physical devices to be enough to manage the virtual environment
effectively.

"Although many organisations have been caught by surprise by just how quickly virtual machines have appeared and spread throughout the company, there are no excuses for not putting some time aside to ensure that the virtual environment is being properly managed," he explained.

"Failure to do so will not only hold the IT department back from using virtualisation to transform the services it provides, but also place the business at risk of data loss and other serious problems," he added.