Netuitive released the results of its survey around virtualization management. The study, which polled VMware customers about their ability to manage virtual machines (VMs), revealed that 94 percent of respondents are not confident in the tools they  use to manage their virtual environments.

Survey respondents shed light into specific areas of frustration around managing VMs -- the overall takeaway being that less than 6% of those polled feel they have the right tools for managing their virtual environments. Among the top concerns, poor visibility into performance, difficulty in isolating root causes and increased administration time ranked high in the findings. Information gleaned from the survey supports the idea that although virtualization continues to rise in popularity among organizations, the ability to manage these environments is perceived as overwhelming.

"There has been a lot of talk around the value of virtualization and we can't argue that this area of technology opens up a whole new realm in terms of flexibility, cost savings and agility," said Daniel Heimlich, vice president at Netuitive. "The problem is that organizations started implementing VMs without first thinking about how they'll be able to manage them. Now we're starting to see a lot of questions being asked about how to do just that."

The idea that today's VM management tools are lacking in performance is supported by some of the industry's most influential companies and thought leaders. CA announced a study that shows that more than half of CIOs surveyed don't think their companies are doing an effective job managing virtual environments. Worldwide, 54% of large enterprises rated management of their virtual server environment as a critical or high IT priority, yet only 45% thought their respective companies were doing an effective job in this important area. The study also found that respondents were clear about the need for reporting metrics across the IT infrastructure to provide the "big picture."

Enterprise Management Associates senior analyst Andi Mann agrees that the biggest problem with virtualization lies in the area of performance management.

"As virtualization deployments grow, substandard performance management prevents organizations from realizing their full potential. Without good performance management, there is no certainty into how applications will behave, or whether SLAs can be met. All of this stops organizations from expanding their virtual deployments, maximizing resource utilization, and achieving virtualization goals," said Mann. "A new approach is needed -- one that uses sophisticated, real time analytics to reduce the massive manual effort of managing VM complexity and ultimately creates confidence and restores performance predictability to managing VMs."