Virtualization and cost reduction

By Ragu. Posted on 01 August 2011.

Overview

Dan Kusnetzky, the founder of Kusnetzky Group LLC on ZDNet.com argues virtualization is not cloud computing and it is a technology likely to be in use where the cloud computing services originate, but it is not absolutely required whereas Thomas Bittman, a vice president and distinguished analyst with Gartner Research says virtualization unlocks the door to cloud computing and pushes organizations in that direction. I have already discussed this in my previous article Virtualization and cloud computing, cloud computing is wide and virtualization is one of its features. This article focuses on virtualization is not just one of its features, it is the first and most important feature to reduce the investment in IT of any sized organizations.

Recent virtualization trend and success

The search for the word ‘virtualization’ is rising in search engines while almost half of x86 server workloads are virtualized today with VMware the market leader, says Ellen Messmer on networkworld.com. Marie Hattar, Cisco systems in a session at Interop New York states, virtualization breaks the bond of physical between applications, servers and hardware. A recent survey from Symantec proves server virtualization is an overall success; although scalability, reducing capital and operating expenditure as issues.

Virtualization for SMEs

The small and medium sized enterprises did not want to go centralized for the costs involved in scalability, expertise and maintenance. With the evolution of virtualization and cloud, they want to go centralized to spend less on the IT infrastructure. The small and medium sized companies do not have to depend upon large sized companies anymore to implement centralization concept as virtualization makes the IT simpler in terms of complexity by separating the software server form hardware and desktop virtualization. In terms of software, hardware and disaster recovery costs, virtualization makes any companies to spend very less comparatively as it eliminates the concepts of owning the software and licensing, adding extra hardware to handle companies’ growths and disaster recovery as the cloud providers handle it.

Effective virtualization

The different cloud deployment models satisfy the clients’ requirement for their budget. The small sized companies may not be able to invest more in IT may opt in for public cloud model where they have a shared server compromising their privacy. Some companies want to be virtualized completely and some want to virtualize only its core business for their budget. Before virtualizing, the companies need to decide what to be virtualized and what to be on the local servers or they can virtualize completely enjoying the services of public and private cloud together in a hybrid model. In such case, they need to decide what to be private and what to be on public cloud considering the security, requirements and their budget.

Virtualization server consolidations

Virtualization also opens the door to decide what type of server need to be virtualized (application, physical, database storage and service). In virtual, any types of servers can be created, modified or expanded as per the demand occurs or the particular server can be virtualized with a different provider. The physical server a company subscribes for may not be needed in the future, in that case, they have the option to downgrade the server capacity and capability to fully utilize the server and to reduce down the subscription charges. Hence, virtualization reduces the complexity of the technology from the client side and utilize the latest upgrades on the servers for a lesser cost with better manageability features.

Outlook

Along with the advantages, recent cloud outages make the companies to rethink to go virtual. But the way the outages were handled and compensated prove it does not act as a barrier to rethink anymore. The companies also need to consider is the uptime of the server and the service level agreement with the provider to solve the breakdowns. A company which is virtualized invests the saved money from virtualization into other productive areas whereas a non-virtualized company invests more money in IT. Hence the non-virtualized company has more chances to lag behind in the market, in the age of cloud computing. Virtualization is the trend because it impacts the organization’s growth in a positive way and it proves to be a success.

HTML Comment Box is loading comments...