FISMA News

Sciencelogic Survey Reveals Major Trends in Government IT

(April 18, 2007)-- Virtualization and IPv6 proved to be the "hot button" topics in a FOSE 2007 survey conducted by ScienceLogic, a leading provider of IT management solutions. Over the course of the trade show, 113 government agency IT administrators and directors were surveyed to determine the changing needs of agency IT operations.

One of the biggest trends was the IT department's desire for effective virtualization solutions. Over 90% of the survey respondents indicated that virtualization management was extremely important for their IT operations, with over 70% planning on a solution implementation within the next year.

"Server virtualization is a critical tool for government agencies to consolidate hardware assets and cut costs," said David Link, CEO and founder of ScienceLogic. "But agencies need to keep in mind that virtualization actually increases the strain on systems and hardware by running close to full capacity and requires a powerful and reliable management solution to provide detailed metrics on both physical and virtual server performance and availability."

Another key trend was the assessed readiness for IPv6 among agency IT departments. IPv6 is the next generation of IP protocol, the basis for sending and receiving information on the Internet, which is currently using IPv4. Only 1 in 5 attendees surveyed indicated that their agency would be ready for IPv6 by the 2008 deadline, with 1 in 4 noting that they will NOT be ready.

Other findings from the survey revealed:

* Contrary to popular belief, IT departments do feel valued by their respective agencies, with over 90% reporting that agencies understand the value of their contributions.
* Multiplatform (multiple vendor) database management had strong poll among the respondents, with over 70% saying it was important to their operations, but fewer than 40% will actually pursue any solution by next year.
* FISMA was important to only 66% of the respondents with only 40% planning a technology implementation by next year.
* Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) and the configuration management database (CMDB) was seen as important by 55% of respondents, with fewer than 30% implementing such a solution by next year.

IT administrators were also asked to list their top concerns for the department, which included:
* IT Security - 82%
* Budget constraints - 75%
* Dealing with new technology - 42%

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