EMC has today released the results of a survey that it has carried out among IT managers in Europe. The survey found that as many as fifty percent did not have a reliable, real time view of their IT infrastructure.

The survey, which is based on responses from 240 IT managers from across Europe, was designed to investigate what issues firms counter as they take on management solutions in their enterprise systems. It found that half were lacking a good, clear, overview of the running of their systems. A worrying statistic according to EMC.

"A lack of visibility into the core IT infrastructure poses significant risks to data centre consolidation or migration projects, as companies are faced with the manual and time-consuming task of building a reliable picture of their information infrastructure," said Chris Gahagan, senior vice president of Resource Management Software at the firm.

He added, "IT departments that are unable to relate applications to the underlying IT infrastructure struggle to guarantee SLAs to their customers, and analyse root cause problems to the business."

EMC recommends that firms use ITIL, or another best practice set of guidelines. These can deliver benefits to enterprises, including reduced costs, ensured best practices and improved customer service.