Security remains high on the priority list of IT professionals as they evolve their IT infrastructures.
According to research conducted by F5 Networks at the recent VMworld 2015 conference in Barcelona, security (56%) as the main priority for their business over the next 12 months, ahead of IT cost reduction (34%), increased agility (30%) and mobility (25%).
This is doubly important as the software-defined IT transition continues apace. Fully a fifth (20%) of European businesses believe they have already achieved a fully software-defined data center (SDDC).
A further 46% of respondents, made up of IT decision-makers from across Europe, claim their companies have achieved a partial SDDC—suggesting 66% of firms have either a fully or semi-SDDC environment.
These environments are also becoming operationalized. The survey found that 33% of businesses are serving customer applications via an SDDC, while a further 22% plan to complete proof of concept (PoC) and be in production within 12 months.
When asked what the biggest challenges of SDDC delivery in the next 12 months were, security came out on top again, with 34% of respondents listing security as a major barrier. End-user confidence (30%), a focus on other technologies (28%) and cost (25%) were deemed as other factors inhibiting SDDC delivery in the coming year.
“Significant barriers clearly remain for businesses trying to fully virtualize their data center environments—particularly around security, cost and business confidence,” said Paul Pindell, senior solution architect at F5 Networks. “These issues represent a challenge for the IT industry, as much as the businesses themselves, to develop SDDC solutions which deliver on all enterprise requirements to deliver applications quickly and securely to all users.”