How committing to virtualization can help your business

By Dawn Altnam

According to Parag Patel, Vice President of Alliances at VMware, most companies virtualize anywhere from 40 to 60 percent of their computing resources. This speaks to two major issues in the virtualization industry that are rather significant: 1) More and more companies are virtualizing the bulk of their workloads, but more importantly 2) The fact that these companies aren’t virtualizing mission-critical processes says that most companies aren’t fully convinced of the benefits of virtualized computing.

Still, it’s reasonable to assume that a company’s reason for avoiding full-scale virtualization is due to the complex nature of bottom-tier applications. These are usually complex, difficult to manage on local disks and critical to everyday operations. However, the future of private cloud computing will rely directly on fully virtualized server environments. In order for enterprise-level companies to stay competitive, they’ll need to actively consider the implications of virtualizing mission-critical business processes.

Concerns about Big Data Virtualization

Some of the biggest skeptics of full-scale virtualization always revert back to the security issue. This isn’t completely unfounded, as there have been major security risks posed within cloud environments over the past few years. But the reality is these issues are few and far between. Additionally, there are concerns that migrating massive data sets to a virtualized environment will somehow damage your sensitive data. Simply doing the proper research, and hiring a reputable virtualization provider can quell all of these issues. High-end providers will ensure your data is safe, and that the migration process is done carefully and correctly.

Four Reasons to Virtualize

1. Virtualization is Eco-Friendly – While not at the forefront of most virtualization conversations, the environmental impacts of virtualization are important to consider. The concept is simple: a single server running multiple virtualized servers is going to use less power than several individual dedicated servers running at full capacity 24/7.

2. Minimized Downtime – No matter the size of the business, when technical mishaps occur on the infrastructural or server level, the rest of the business operation suffers. Virtualization provides an environment where incidences of downtime and other IT related disasters are kept to a minimum.

3. Boosted Efficiency – IT department heads love, or at least they should love, virtualized computing environments. You can run multiple platforms, operating systems and computing environments all from a single dashboard. This translates to an increase of efficiency because it eliminates the need for sophisticated server administration knowledge. In fact, the average IT specialist can manage cloud servers from most virtualized server environments.

4. Better Hardware Security – The tricky thing about networked computing has always been security. The modern workplace relies on collaboration initiatives that require workers to access, manage and send data securely on both local and remote networks. Virtualization significantly reduces the instances of potential security risks and allows users to access computing resources from virtually any type of computing device out there.

What really matters

At the end of the day, these decisions are wrapped up in what best suits the needs of your organization. The reality is that most dedicated server solutions are becoming impractical – they are bulky, inefficient and expensive. In the coming years, more and more businesses will be opting out of server-heavy datacenters in favor of virtualized server environments.

About the author: Dawn Altnam lives and works in the Indianapolis area, and she enjoys following the tech and business worlds. After furthering her education, she has spent some time researching her interests and blogging of her discoveries often.