Today, 25 percent of small businesses have virtualized at least some of their servers. The rest are either investigating or planning to deploy it in the next two years according to the CDW Small Business Virtualization Roadmap.
8 Key Advantages of Virtualization:
1.) Virtualization allows multiple applications to run in their own virtual environments within a single, physical server
2.) The technology improves hardware utilization by increasing the percent of a server’s capacity that is actually used
3.) It also simplifies IT management, improves disaster recovery and increases business agility, enabling IT staffers to launch new servers in hours instead of days or weeks
4.) According to Ray Boggs, VP of small/medium business and home office research for IDC- small and large companies alike achieve the same benefits through server virtualization, just not on the same scale. For example, a large company that’s consolidating 4,000 servers to 2,000 servers will save dollars on power and cooling costs than a small firm that’s reducing its server count from four to two. Boggs says, for the small firms it’s about better management and being more agile and efficient. It’s about looking ahead at how you can be smarter about your technology investment and squeezing the most out of every nickel
5.) 79 percent of small businesses that have adopted virtualization have seen significant benefits and 65 percent say it has significantly improved their IT organization’s return on investment
6.) Virtualization is a constant work in progress. Small firms that have begun virtualization projects will continue to invest in the technology and virtualize more of their servers over time
7.) There are several steps IT departments must take to ensure a successful virtualization implementation. They include assessing the current data centre environment, determining which applications are candidates for virtualization and identifying virtualization goals
8.) After deployment, IT staffers should measure ROI and look at the benefits, such as reduced server, support costs, improved IT productivity and increased uptime
IT administrators should examine their data centres and business requirements to determine whether they are good candidates for virtualization. Consider virtualization if your company needs to replace old servers, the environment has two or more servers, existing servers have low utilization rates or if you’re dealing with server sprawl or escalating support, energy or space costs. As for business factors, consider virtualization if your company is planning significant business growth or if it requires high availability of applications and data.
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