Research reveals more virtualised technology in automation

SolutionsPT's research demonstrated that virtualisation is now becoming more prevalent, with 85 per cent of end-user respondents saying they now utilise virtualisation technology to some extent in their organisation. However, although the bulk of virtualisation deployments remain limited solely to IT departments (38 per cent), 18 per cent of those companies questioned said they use it in their engineering and automation IT, while an encouraging 29 per cent now use virtualisation across both areas.

The demand for increased availability emerged as the key driver for end users considering virtualisation (35 per cent), while both end users and systems integrators recognised external threats at the biggest risk to their security. The end user respondents admitted that their current security measures were limited to use of passwords (46 per cent) and the use of anti-virus software (42 per cent).

Rob Dinsmore, Product Manager for the hardware division of SolutionsPT, comments: "There has been a tendency in recent years for automation IT to take its lead from traditional IT and many of the trends we are seeing in manufacturing began on the office floor.

"As we can see from these figures, virtualisation is slowly beginning to transfer to the factory floor, but we need to embrace these technologies more to optimise our capabilities in automation and engineering. When questioned, only 12 per cent of systems integrators had achieved a 50 per cent level of adoption within their customer base, so there is still progress to be made.

"Virtualisation has much to offer the industrial world and the benefits to companies can be significant. For example, with virtualisation, we can take traditional hardware such as servers and reduce the number of actual machines needed, by converting most of them to virtual machines.

"The advantages of virtualisation include less downtime, reduced maintenance and energy costs due to fewer hardware components and improved resilience against malfunctions."

The road show was held at locations across England and Ireland and welcomed delegates from some of the country's biggest names in industry. For more information about virtualisation, visit SolutionPT's expert blog.