In computing, virtualization is using one single resources such as computing machine or operating system to create multiple non objective components providing as additional resource as if they truly exist whereas what you have is just virtual instances.

Virtualization is a solution to an age long underutilization of computing platforms and resource and has proven to be a cutting edge technical advancements with every big player in the industry rushing to be path of the game – IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Dell, etc. Everyone recognizes virtualization as the next big thing in IT and they are ready to lead the park. But what does this mean for customers and their business? What’s the benefit and how do I understand the value of investing in virtualization? This article will help you get a grasp…

WHAT IS VIRTUALIZATION?

Virtualization basically means to create a virtual instance of a resource or device like desktop, server, application, operating system, network resources or storage device dividing a single physical/actual component (resources/device) into multiple execution environments. This concept allows one physical device/resource e.g. a computer to do the job of multiple computers and its further entrenched in what is now known as virtual environments which means the ability of one physical computer to host multiple operating systems all at once. It’s a very cost saving approach to building a robust IT infrastructure because it helps to transform hardware into software by creating virtual instances of the processor, memory and storage device (hard disk).

Virtualization is a journey that is dated over 3 decades back when the need to partition large mainframe hardware became a challenge and further developed in the 90s to allow mainframe computers multitask easily. Every business including end-users can benefit greatly from virtualization because you can apply virtualization to almost everything including desktops, operating system/platforms, application server, application, network, hardware, storage, service and management all can be virtualization.

One fundamental advantage of virtualization is autonomic computing – which enables an IT environment to manage itself based on perceived activity and utility computing. The ultimate goal in virtualization is to centralize administrative tasks while improving scalability and workloads.

• It offers choice of running multiple operating systems on one computer machine.
• It saves time and money.
• It’s the easiest way to consolidate server and infrastructure
• It offers easy approach to manage and secure of desktop environments.

Virtualization has little known issues but requires powerful computers and high technical skill to build and operate a virtual IT infrastructure.

On the business side: virtualization is a cost-effective way to run multiple operating systems and software on a single machine giving the ability to share and access basic system resources while providing the safest and easiest approach to IT management than physical hardware.

So why should any business consider virtualization at all, these 4 factors would help you make sense of virtualization;

• Hardware underutilization
• Server sprawl causing data centers to virtually run out of space
• The rise of energy costs
• The rise of IT admin IT systems

“Virtualization is a veritable solution to make your business more agile, your IT infrastructure more robust, and your workloads more flexible and of course your workforce more collaborative to deliver better performance and achieve a higher return on investment while saving cost and keeping IT cost within the budget.” – Agboola Toheeb

In enterprise environment, virtualization of mission-critical business applications has proven to be the most effective solution to:

• Increased efficiency and greater agility
• Infrastructure consolidation
• Faster provisioning of applications
• Improved configuration management
• High availability of mission-critical applications
• Automated optimization of resources
• Dynamic expansion of application

Benefit of virtualization to your business

• It’s cost saving
• It offers greater flexibility
• It the most agility in application provisioning – time to deploy
• It provides higher availability
• It reduces and in some case could eliminate downtime

Our solution architects and business analyst are ready to help you with some of the common challenges with adopting virtualization like

• The budget – keeping cost within the budget
• Inadequate IT infrastructure – designing a road map and adoption model for virtualization
• Insufficient virtualization skill sets and application knowledge – a backup team of trained experts.
• Storage performance and scalability or network infrastructure issues – our performance and monitoring tools would work great for you.

You can gain more insights and get answers to the most critical and challenging questions on adopting virtualization from our dedicated team. You can share your reservations such as

• What’s keeping you from adopting virtualization?
• Knowing what to consider for Application Virtualization?

Want to get started with the adoption and deployment of Virtualization? Get a Free report on how to start… click here