August 23, 2016

What is virtualisation and why should you care?

 

What is virtualisation and why should you care?

When defined technically, virtualisation involves a whole host of technologies that help generate a layer of abstraction between hardware and software tools running on them. Virtualisation solutions extend beyond a physical view, thus providing a logical understanding of the scale and efficiency of available computing resources to benefit your business.

 

Benefits to your business

Virtualisation solutions guarantee a wide range of benefits such as helping run multiple operating systems at the same time, on a single machine, and leveraging hardware utilisation. Secure partitioning for more data storage and productivity is the most significant advantage of virtualisation. When implemented with the latest virtualisation technologies, the process helps partition single physical servers into multiple virtual servers, thus reducing hardware requirements substantially. As physical servers get divided, each one of them can run as standalone logical servers with independent operating systems and applications.

Early virtual infrastructure

When the initial phase of virtualisation implementation unfolded back in the 90s, the technology was mainly used to create end user computing environments on a single mainframe hardware platform. In simple terms, an IT administrator who intends to roll out a new software tool can make use of virtualisation technologies to get comprehensive knowledge on how it might work on a Windows or a Linux machine. With growing IT complexities, virtualisation solutions have changed over the years; leading to the onset of a flurry of transformations have altered the way of implementation of this cutting-edge technology.

For businesses of all sizes

Large corporations with multitudes of IT resources were the first to implement virtualisation. However, small and medium businesses also joined the bandwagon soon after, in order to take advantage of the benefits that virtualisation solutions promised. Server consolidation is one of the key advantages. Virtualisation benefits your business by reduce server costs by centralising server management, increasing server utilisation, and limiting environmental impacts.

Service levels, disaster recovery, and business continuity

According to experts, more than 60% of enterprise IT departments across the globe are now diligently focusing on server consolidation to increase server utilisation and automate data center processes. Virtualisation also helps reduce downtime by improving reliability with enhanced business continuity and integrated disaster recovery solutions.

Hosting business infrastructure using virtualisation technologies have major benefits for business of all sizes, and migrating from current hardware heavy legacy infrastructure can be swift and painless.

Shouldn’t virtualisation be an integral part of your IT strategy?