Unlock the full value of virtualization

Virtualization holds great promises for the data center – better quality of service, improved availability and business continuity, having the ability to mobilize and deploy resources much more quickly and significantly reducing energy consumption. And being able to deliver these benefits while reducing costs can make you a hero. But the delivery of these benefits requires that you take a strategic view of virtualization in the data center, integrating infrastructure, applications and service management from a business service management perspective.

Recent research publications show two major changes underway for virtualization. Customers are:

• Broadening the portfolio of business outcomes and IT benefits they expect from virtualization, including agility and flexibility, availability and business continuity(1)
• Moving from the deployment of specific applications and projects to driving virtualization pervasively throughout the data center(2)

Here are five challenges you’ll want to address in order to realize the maximum value and benefit by making virtualization pervasive.

1. Think of virtualization as transformational. In particular, effectively permeating virtualization throughout the data center requires an ongoing focus on ruthless standardization and simplification of the infrastructure itself, facilitated through ongoing consolidation endeavors complemented by application modernization (if not SOA) initiatives, in order to maximize its utility and value.

2. Management is key. Your data center will be even more heterogeneous, not less. You’re likely to have hypervisors from multiple suppliers. And even after consolidation, you’re likely to still run a significant number of applications directly on physical infrastructure of different types and sizes (blades, rack mount, etc). Your infrastructure management tools need to not only help manage this heterogeneous physical infrastructure, but also this heterogeneous virtual infrastructure.

3. Business Services are of the utmost importance. Look at your IT resources (physical and virtual) from a business services perspective. This has implications for any objectives you have regarding business continuity, operational availability (quality of service) and service management. IT Governance and Service Level Agreements already in place must apply to the virtual environment, not just the physical. This will help you address the most common challenge, virtual server sprawl.

4. Automate for greater insight and control. Infrastructure management tools must be capable of monitoring and controlling the environment from a capacity planning perspective. Make sure that applications and business services have the resources (physical and virtual) they need, both “now” in terms of current load and conditions, and over time as business conditions, demand and loads change. The more you can automate this insight and control loop, the more responsive you’ll be.