The UK is leading the way when it comes to adoption of virtualisation in in Europe, according to executives from VMware.
During an interview with IT PRO at VMworld 2010, Fredrik Sjostedt, director of product and solutions marketing for the firm, sang the praises of the nation for its rapid acceptance of the technology and claimed it was ahead of the likes of Germany and France.
"[In] Europe, you see very different maturity levels [but] the most mature countries or subregions from a European perspective is very much the UK... and the Nordics," he said.
Sjostedt claimed savings in capital expediently had been realised by companies in the UK, but now the drive was simplification of operations. Surprisingly though, Mark Newton, UK managing director of VMware, claimed much more complexity was apparent in the small and medium-sized business (SMB) space than large enterprises
"One of the common things that we see... is companies who have a big complex offering and think why don't we package it differently and sell it to the midmarket for less, essentially trying to dumb down the functionality," he told said.
"The midmarket can be more complex. The bigger you are the more standardised you are... so it can be simplified quite effectively [but] the midmarket isn't like that. They are fleet of foot, agile, they do things in different ways and are prepared to change business processes."
"Therefore there is a complexity that sometimes is more prevalent in the midmarket than there is in the big corporates and we sometimes forget that," added Newton.
When it came to cloud computing, the UK was a little more cautious but was still up there among the top adopters and looked to leaders of industry to help decide whether to adopt or not.
"The UK is definitely part of the European top tier when it comes to the adoption [of cloud] because there are a lot of large organisations driving it and showing the possibilities," Newton said.
"It is very important... and we have this momentum [in the UK] so it is helping to drive the comfort [and] trust in the [cloud models]."
