As we’ve already noted in the introduction, in one of the technology industry’s neater little ironies, virtualisation’s single greatest disadvantage in life is probably the burden of its own name. Virtualisation. I mean, what were its parents thinking?

The term is, to say the least, ambiguous. As a result, the word virtualisation has come to mean all things to all people, and is now marginally more over-exposed than Jordan and Peter Andre.
So let’s cut to the chase; explode the myth; get down to brass tacks; whatever.

Wishy-washy moniker notwithstanding, virtualisation is very real and it’s very big. And while no technology will deliver a winning hand for every requirement, all bets are off where its likelihood of mass-market success is concerned. Indeed, look at virtualisation from almost any commercial angle you like, and it’s every inch the real deal. (OK, enough with the card analogies – Ed.)

For definition’s sake, virtualisation can be described as a logical representation of an organisation’s physical resources. However, to truly understand its value, it has to be placed in a business context.

Take server virtualisation.Through it, a business can run different operating systems in isolation, independent of one another, on the same server. In itself, that’s hardly awe-inspiring. But consider the business advantages such functionality opens up, and it’s suddenly altogether more compelling. Hardware becomes cheaper to buy, cheaper to run, and cheaper to maintain. Virtualised systems and infrastructures tend to be much easier to manage and support, and that in turn frees up IT headcount to go and do something less boring and/or more strategic.

Virtualisation is even seen as a great white hope in companies’ race to develop green credentials, and in helping address issues such as risk profiling.




Accordingly, the entire ideal is being touted by many in the industry as a real ‘silver bullet’ solution, and the vendor community is forming a less than orderly queue to jump aboard the bandwagon. However, the very fact that virtualisation has broadened to such a degree, and so quickly, is begging as many questions as it answers.

“Virtualisation technology has now matured to a point where it is being deployed by many organisations as the underlying basis for their infrastructures”, comments Andy Hunt, a Senior Director at VMware, perhaps the biggest name in the current crop of virtualisation players. “It is forcing organisations to re-think how they deploy IT.” However, he says, some benefits and usage scenarios are known and understood to a greater degree than others.

And however these knowledge gaps may have come about – the suggestion is that it is because the sector and its potential have accelerated so rapidly – it is clear that some reaches of the market are struggling to keep pace, and that many businesses still don’t fully grasp the idea, its benefits, or its potential pitfalls.

Despite this, virtualisation continues to mature apace, with its evolution being fuelled by a move away from its traditional hinterland in Test & Development, and into the production environment, notes Michael Hjalsted, European Server Marketing Director at Unisys; a view shared by Neil Sanderson, Management Product & Solutions Manager at Microsoft.
He believes that virtualisation will not only gain widespread acceptance and adoption, but become a normal, everyday part of business. “Conversations will soon change from being about virtualisation itself to being about IT projects that involve virtualisation”, he says; citing two main “push factors” for this – the importance of agility and flexibility, and the potential for large cost reductions.

Other big IT industry names are throwing similar weight behind virtualisation strategies; a factor likely to accelerate and change the dynamics of the market still further according to Brian Green, Technical Director at Novell.

Green, whose company is working with Microsoft in ensuring its future OS platforms support virtualisation, believes that strategic shifts in the market could become more and more common as the sector enters the mainstream.

"In the past you needed to buy platform virtualisation technologies from a third party, but now these enablers have been included in the Server Operating System. There are already moves in the datacentre from Unix to Linux. The combination of Linux and virtualisation will only accelerate that trend.”

Novell includes OS Virtualisation as part of its Linux offering, and believes that other providers will follow suit, driving virtualisation technologies towards commoditisation. As such, the need for businesses to prepare and familiarise themselves with the virtualisation lexicon is a very real one.


Green also stresses, however, that it is not enough for organisations to simply gen up on the lingo and think about taking a punt; instead it’s important to look at virtualisation as a vital ingredient in a much larger whole.

“Virtualisation itself is only part of the solution. As you change the management paradigm from physical devices and Operating Systems to virtual devices, you’ll need a completely new management framework.” In the end the answer lies in properly identifying and understanding how best virtualisation can help drive the business. Are you trying to improve your Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity strategies? Are you trying to improve your Recovery Point Objective (RPO)? Maybe you’re trying to improve your Recovery Time Objective (RTO)? Virtualisation is an important consideration in all these scenarios.

Microsoft’s Sanderson sounds a final note of caution, warning that just as virtualisation comes in different flavours, so too do organisations, and their readiness to deploy it.

Virtualisation, he says, is neither a single definable approach, nor a panacea. The benefits are most likely to be realised where it is combined with good management approaches and where it integrates smoothly with your existing environment. Our advice? Look for a partner who’ll help you to play your hand, not force it.