New research has shown that virtualization solutions have continued to grow in popularity as more companies begin to realise the benefits of outsourcing.
According to a new study conducted by CommVault, some 46 per cent of respondents claimed that at least half of their networking infrastructure was virtualized.
The firm's Virtualization Survey also showed that a fifth of businesses claimed that their adoption of server and storage virtualization was total - encompassing every aspect of their IT deployment.
According to the majority of respondents who have adopted virtualization solutions, the driving forces were the desire to cut IT spending, improved efficiency and the positive impacts virtualization can have on customer service.
Firms also highlighted the benefit that virtualization can have in terms of improved disaster recovery.
Commenting on the results of the survey, David West, vice president of marketing and business development for CommVault, said: "Embracing virtualization can dramatically reduce costs and increase operational efficiencies as long as you can easily and reliably manage the massive volume of data produced by hundreds of virtual machines."
According to IT analyst Frost & Sullivan, IT outsourcing and managed wide area networks can free up staff time as security issues can be dealt with by a third party.