Large European organisations anticipate that their spending on data centre management staff will rise by approximately 10% this year, more than nine times the growth of overall IT spending, research by analyst IDC has shown.

A quarter of respondents reported that many of their servers and storage devices are managed manually, while 31% said that growth in the use of virtualisation had created complexities in integrative servers, storage and network management.

“CIOs are grappling with the consequences of virtualisation,” said Giorgio Nebuloni, research analyst in IDC’s systems and infrastructure group. “While the benefits are clear, the impact on management is proving to be a challenge. New models for management will be needed to ensure that virtualisation continues to contribute positively to the data centre.”

IDC’s survey also found that 69% of organisations recognise the potential of data centre automation as a tool to cut costs, improve alignment with business goals and increase security by reducing errors.