While the use of converged infrastructure (CI) is becoming mainstream, the accompanying management tools are still a challenge, according to the third annual global State of Converged Infrastructure survey from Zenoss.

CI systems integrate servers, storage, network and virtualization components into one system that can be managed as a single unit rather than separate systems. With 84% of all respondents using or planning to deploy CI, the technology has reached mainstream status. Companies large and small are building data centers around these integrated systems because they reduce investment risk and offer a faster way to scale out IT infrastructure capacity.

"While converged infrastructure architectures are delivering real value as the foundational element behind the transformation already underway in enterprise data centers, these packaged offerings are lacking unified monitoring and analytics software," said Megan Lueders, VP of Marketing at Zenoss. "With more effective management tools available, there is a huge opportunity for IT organizations shops to dramatically increase their agility and IT effectiveness."

The 2015 CI survey provides many additional insights into data center modernization, including:

■ In companies with more than 5,000 employees, only 8% are not using or considering CI.

■ Despite being pervasively adopted, the survey results indicate management software is lagging behind, with 63% of respondents indicating they manage their CI deployments by repurposing existing management tools designed for traditional infrastructure.

■ Astonishingly, 25% of companies who have deployed CI are dealing with seven or more tools to manage it.

■ Key drivers for CI deployments include projects for big data, infrastructure as a service, unified communications, and custom application development.

Zenoss polled 410 IT professionals from across the world to determine how technology leaders are leveraging CI to respond to business needs, including 151 who have already adopted CI within their IT environments and another 194 who were currently considering or planning for it. 32% of these respondents come from organizations with more than 5,000 employees.

Kent Erickson is Alliance Strategist at Zenoss.