Virtualization Takes Off

 

Is virtualization the answer to everything? It certainly seems that way. Cost-reduction — check. Growth — check. Business flexibility — check. Following a bit of VDI- and cloud-induced distraction in 2010, we see tremendous activity levels for the more mature virtualization types in 2011.

All Covered, a Redwood City, Calif.-based regulation, compliance, business continuity and strategic planning services company, has deployed enterprise virtualization to both cut costs and increase flexibility.

?We?ve been fortunate that our business has been expanding,? says CIO Tim Crawford, who is also a past president of the Society for Information Management?s San Francisco Bay Area chapter. ?However, there may be times where some services contract. Given that, the virtual model can save between 25 and 75 percent on operating costs, depending on how efficiently the servers are used today.?

It?s clear that server and storage virtualization are only now hitting their stride, as most organizations have at least one production environment and are beginning to move aggressively to expand. Application virtualization may also be taking advantage, though that?s unclear from our study, which didn?t separate it out from the other two.  Network virtualization, however, was looked at separately and still seems to be several years away from meaningful deployment levels.