Virtualised environments still vulnerable

Virtualised data centres still carry a certain degree of risk when it comes to the threat of malicious attacks, says BCS.

This is the view of Sunbelt Software, which said organisations 'can get careless' with virtual machine programmes as a result of placing too much faith in virtualisation security.

Chris Boyd, a malware researcher at the firm, says: “The biggest issue with virtualisation is that many people treat it as a magic bullet security solution, while in reality, it can be attacked just like anything else.”

IT outsourcing users are likely to increase their investment in virtualisation over the next five years, it has been suggested, says iHotDesk.

A poll of 970 IT experts conducted by Cisco found more than two-thirds believe virtualisation will be the main networking investment they carry out in the coming years, as chief information officers attempt to reduce the costs linked to technology.

The research also discovered that virtualisation is being adopted by companies because of its ability to save on energy, space and costs, while the increased need for data centres to be green will boost its popularity.

Siemens has released unified communications (UC) software optimised for data centres and virtualised environments, writes V3.co.uk.

OpenScape UC Server 2010 is designed for standards-based open virtualisation strategies, and includes subscription pricing to alleviate the economic hurdles to UC.

Siemens also introduced OpenScape Fusion, a packaged integrations platform that simplifies the integration of real-time communications with other business applications.