Power of Virtualization

Power of Virtualization:

While the advantages of the SaaS are many, I don’t think companies can get away with their in-house IT entirely (at least not for now). With benefits of cost and convenience, it’s no longer a matter of why but it’s a question of when and suitability to specific business needs. At least customers have the choice today. For those companies that are contemplating on how to increase the horsepower of their existing IT without having to purchase more hardware/software/resources, the power of virtualization is too compelling to ignore. Companies with big Data Center are the forerunners of utilizing the power of virtualization and now it’s getting mainstream across businesses of all sizes. Virtualization indeed makes the cloud computing a viable model for businesses. Without going into the nuts and bolts of virtualization, at the high level, it allows the companies to, at least, double or quadruples the capacity with the existing resources through virtualization software.

For e.g. you can create many virtual servers without having to buy physical Hardware. Same goes with the desktops as well as applications. Result is a compelling business value such as (a) reduced TCO (b) energy consumption (c) easy of manageability (d) agile & dynamic IT environment where Hardware/Software Resources are provisioned and deployed faster. VMware® is the market leader who commands almost 60% of market share followed by Microsoft and Citrix®. In addition to the cost savings, the vendors claim that as a result of smaller footprint of their software on the host OS, the security is highly enhanced. Clearly virtualization offers lots of business benefits. More than the cost, I believe the point (d) will catch the eyes of CIOs, IT Administrators & CEO.

How can I get started with virtualization?

I would say that one should prepare a business case and demonstrate that virtualization is a viable alternative. As a starting point, you can look in to (a) commonality of applications running across Hardware (b) growth of applications and need for capacity to accommodate such growth (c) HW purchase history (d) high availability & Business Continuity considerations (e) impact to the existing licenses & support etc., Then you can look into the choice of technologies that will best meet you business needs. When it comes to choosing the technology vendor, you should aim for a good balance of price, functionality and support factors that best meet your organizational needs.