New Research From IP EXPO 2010 Reveals That Virtualisation and Data Security are the IT Industry's top Priorities for 2010/2011

Respondents see Virtualisation as key Priority but Call for Higher Security Guarantees

LONDON, September 16, 2010 - A survey of 257 of the UK's top IT managers has shown that virtualisation
and data security are top areas of focus for end 2010 and throughout 2011.
The survey was carried out by IP EXPO 2010, Europe's largest end-to-end IT
infrastructure event. Of the professionals surveyed, 88% rated data security
as a key objective and spending priority for the coming year. This was
closely followed by virtualisation which was identified as a priority among
85.8% of respondents.

The survey demonstrates the strength of the IT managers' desire to adopt
virtualisation but also their reservations about the security of the
technology and its ability to protect the sensitive data their companies
hold. 57% of professionals surveyed believe that the roll-out of
virtualisation & cloud based technologies will need to wait until security
guarantees can be demonstrated.

However this should not be seen as bad news for providers of
virtualisation solutions. Only 3% of respondents believe that security issues
will entirely stop their business from adopting virtualisation. 80% of
respondents believe that virtualisation will require a revision of enterprise
security tools and procedures but 81% believe that as a result virtualisation
could in fact offer the opportunity to improve their business's overall data
security.

Adam Malik, Content Director for Imago Techmedia commented "The data
security issues surrounding virtualisation are something the entire IT
industry is coming together to address. The priority is to make sure that
this ground breaking technology can meet the needs of companies of all sizes
as well as some of the UK's highest risk legal and financial companies."

Lionel Wilson, IS Director of the Woodland Trust commented: "We have now
virtualised almost all of the Woodland Trust's server estate as it offers new
ways for us to meet challenges of improving hardware utilisation and drive
down costs whilst also reducing our environmental impact and significant
reduction in energy use on these new systems by over 90%. This has been made
possible through Microsoft Windows 2008 R2, Hyper-V and Dell's Blade
architecture. Rather than paying for and running many under-utilised server
machines, each dedicated to a specific workload, server virtualisation has
allowed us to rationalise the workload onto a smaller number of more
fully-used machines. This necessitates fewer people to manage those
computers, less space to house them, and fewer kilowatt hours of power to run
them, all of which saves money.

Additionally the implementation of Remote Desktop Services over Sunray
has allowed us to considerably reduce power use on our clients by over 95%
whilst also improving user availability and experience."

Virtualisation webcast: 12pm, Today, Thursday 16th September

Join Lionel Wilson, IS Director of the Woodland Trust and Matt Sampson IT
Manager at Ely Community College to discuss their very different
virtualisation journeys and the benefits they are realising from the
technology. bit.ly/ipexpowebtv

About the Research

The survey was completed by 257 of IP EXPO's top attendees. These include
key players and decision makers in management, IT strategy, implementation
and infrastructures.

    Media contacts:
    Niamh O'Grady / Kelly Kerruish
    Epoch on behalf of Imago Techmedia
    +44(0)20-7401-8001
    nogrady@epochpr.com / kkerruish@epochpr.com
    www.imago-group.com/

Media contacts: Niamh O'Grady / Kelly Kerruish, Epoch on behalf of Imago Techmedia, +44(0)20-7401-8001, nogrady at epochpr.com / kkerruish at epochpr.com