Virtualization in Retail
Microsoft’s “Virtualization in Retail Survey 2008” was conducted in February and March 2008 and includes responses from 205 technology decision-makers at U.S. retail companies with annual revenues of $250 million or more who have IT management responsibilities for store locations or regional or national headquarters. Key findings included the following:
| • | Seventy-one percent of the retail companies surveyed are using virtualization technologies to isolate applications, data, operating system instances or transaction services in their stores or headquarters. |
| • | Thirty-five percent of survey respondents cited using virtualization technology to make it easier to centralize deployment and ongoing management of applications. This ease of deployment is critical in today’s complex and competitive environments as retailers are striving to quickly use real-time information in such emerging store technologies as kiosks, self-service checkouts, mobile handheld devices, electronic signage and even computerized shopping carts. |
| • | Thirty-one percent pointed to energy savings as driving their purchase of virtualization technology. The rising awareness of “green” energy initiatives, as well as the increasing power required to run and cool data centers, likely factored into this response. |
| • | Thirty-eight percent of survey respondents cited the need to provide centralized security as a driver toward implementing virtualization within its stores or remote locations. |
| • | Among the 29 percent of retail respondents who are not using virtualization to isolate operating system instances, applications, data or transaction services, one-quarter (25 percent) say their company is considering it. Among those not considering implementing virtualization technologies, more than half say the main reason is cost (51 percent). |
Full Report at https://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2008/apr08/04-29RetailVirtualizationPR.mspx