Data centers around the world are wrestling with a common set of challenges. Over half are not optimized for agility. Most are not agile enough to easily respond to changing client demands or unexpected execution problems. In many data centers, a good portion of the IT budget is still trapped in maintenance and operations, due to aging equipment and a reliance on labor intensive manual process. Many data centers are power and space constrained, with a sizable part of the IT budget going to data center power and cooling, which now exceeds the cost of new systems.

So after the first full day at VMworld, I heard this message over and over again – it is really the underlining theme of the show.

In Paul Maritz’s opening session he goes into detail that over 70% of IT budget is spent on “Keeping the lights on” and less then 30% goes towards “innovation”, and that the biggest costs within the datacenter is storage – clearly an element that does not diminish even in a down turned economy.

These costly problems are aggravated by legacy hardware that is locked into rigid infrastructure silos, each devoted to a particular application or business service. Resources, which can’t be easily shared, are chronically under-utilized. While some applications run short on processing power, storage capacity, and network bandwidth, other applications have far more resources than they need.

In a rigid environment like this, IT isn’t positioned to quickly provision or shift resources to meet the changing needs of the business, and everyone is short on time. IT staffers invariably have to devote too much of their attention to maintaining systems, meeting compliance requirements, and shoring up defenses against security threats—rather than focusing on innovation that increases business value. That’s a problem because now, more than ever before, IT is expected to quickly deliver new services that drive business growth, while working to cut costs. How do you meet these expectations? In short, you need new, more advanced technologies and services that break down technology silos so you can easily pool, share, and allocate resources. What’s more, these new technologies and services need to be easier to buy, quicker to deploy, and easier to manage—so you can extract greater returns from your investments.

All the while, IT organization needs to make hard decisions about compute platform choices for business services. Should you build and manage your own in-house data centers? Use a traditional outsourced service provider? Tap into cloud-related services? Or deploy a hybrid of all three?

This much is certain: The current economic environment is changing how businesses operate—and demanding more from IT. The economics of IT need to change.

Judging by the VMworld attendance of over 12,000 plus people, virtualizing infrastructure is clearly a hot topic to a lot of businesses

And if you want to keep up with up-to-date VMworld 2009 news, don’t forget to follow us on Twitter @HPStorageGuy, @BladeNews @ProLiant   

Chris Purcell 9/1