A new study by DataCore Software found that IT executives are more concerned with virtualization and cloud performance issues than they were last year. The survey found that 63 percent of respondents said that system downtime and latency are the primary concerns related to virtualization and cloud storage.

"DataCore's 2012 State of the Private Cloud survey shows that as virtualization moves from theory to practice, storage-related performance and availability are becoming of greater concern to businesses but cost concerns haven't gone away," DataCore chief executive officer George Teixeira said.

The study noted that 44 percent of survey respondents said storage costs account for more than one-quarter of virtualization budgets, while another 37 percent said their storage costs have increased in 2012. Despite their efforts to purchase more capacity, many companies still face downtime, bottlenecks and performance-related issues.

According to a blog post by Gartner analyst Tom Bittman, the virtualization and private cloud hosting market is heating up, pushing decision-makers to consider all available resources before implementing new systems.

"The use of a storage hypervisor ensures high performance and availability in the storage infrastructure through features such as auto-tiering, device interchangeability, thin provisioning and continuous data protection," Teixeira said.