Tintri, a provider of a virtualization optimized storage system, released an infographic entitled “Storage Holds Back Virtualization Deployments,” in which it laid out the obstacles and demands from their VM customers.

In 2011, thirty-six percent of companies are more than 75 percent virtualized, and that number is expected to grow to 65 percent by the end of 2012. There are, however, reasons that hold back the remaining percentage: 51 percent of companies that didn’t jump on the virtualization bandwagon yet cited storage performance as the main obstacle, while 46 percent pointed out storage costs as the main factor that’s holding them back.

Tintri also rounded up some other statistics. Enterprise apps and desktops are less than 50 percent as to be virtualized than more critical workloads such as core IT infrastructure, and there are two main storage capabilities that IT departments considered to be the most important.  According to the infographic, 46 percent point to visibility of VM performance at the storage layer, compared to the 52 percent that noted performance isolation for VMs.

Bottlenecks represent one of the biggest issues in virtualized environments, which also means that they represent a market in need.  Several companies such as Virtensys are competing in this field.  The starup’s VP of marketing and business development, Stephen Spellicy, discussed his company’s angle in theCube during VMworld 2011.

Tintri itself is also working on tackling the issues virtualized enterprises face today.  CEO Kieran Harty also talked about his company’s SAN appliance on theCube at VMworld, which is specifically designed to work in VMware environments.

The virtualization trend is a big one, especially as new solutions in other areas drive adoption among companies. VMware is currently the dominant player in the hypervisor market, and it has also been branching out into mobile and the social enterprise.