The report also found that no enterprises believe any major management discipline becomes more difficult with virtualization, with most management disciplines perceived to be easier with virtualization, especially disaster recovery planning, availability management, IT cost management, software provisioning and change management.

"Nevertheless, there are significant challenges to be overcome when deploying and managing virtual environments. Amongst the most significant are training and staff development. Even with virtualization in place, most organizations are finding this to be an issue, so enterprises looking to deploy virtualization must take this into account," Mann says in the report.

Less than half of the enterprises with virtualization already in place, and only a quarter of those planning to adopt it, believe they have sufficient skills to manage the environment, the report found.

Policy-based resource management and capacity planning also bring new challenges in the virtual world, requiring new technologies and processes, Mann said.

Better software management is virtualization's next frontier. Click here to read more.

"Several vendors are stepping up to this challenge, but there is still plenty of room for this market to develop, and there is especially a need to integrate these capabilities into standard enterprise management solutions," Mann said.

The management of virtual environments is, by all accounts, a lot easier than might otherwise be expected, he said in the report, noting that "in ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) disciplines especially, it is marginally surprising to see how most organizations believe it will be easier to manage a virtual environment than a physical one.

"This reflects one of the many benefits of virtualization. It may well be, as one respondent put it, the 'most important development in systems management in the last 20 years,'" Mann said in the report.

Security is an area where virtualization is not all rosy. "Security, while considered a major benefit of virtualization, is also a potentially significant management problem. Attaining the appropriate skills to manage virtualization environments is a particular challenge," Mann said.

While some security benefits are apparent, so too are some additional vulnerabilities.

"Enterprises must ensure they understand these new exposures, and implement processes and technology to close these gaps. Vendors must provide more complete capabilities to prevent these gaps from exposing their customers to significant risk," Mann said.

Enterprises considering virtualization technologies should carefully plan their deployment, taking into account the potential costs, disruptions and skill challenges. But there appears to be no reason to wait.

"This is not surprising, because enterprises that have implemented virtualization have clearly achieved significant benefits, and are leading the way in what will turn out to be a virtual revolution," the report concludes.

This article was originally published on eWEEK.com.