VIRTUALISATION
The phenomena
It is hard to remember a topic so talked about in the IT
‘Virtualisation Aware’, to adding
software functionality to support
industry as virtualisation. It appears from all the comments
business continuity solutions.
that virtualisation is the answer to all our prayers, whether
The essence of virtualised storage
that be ‘saving the planet’ by reducing carbon emissions or
is to create a pool of storage resources
simply saving us some money by better utilising our existing
available to any server on the network
and vendors have gone to great
IT infrastructure.
pains to simplify its operation and
management. However where they
I
t seems that the beauty of the next logical step beyond server have really made a mark is by adding
virtualisation is in the eye of the consolidation is virtualisation for client software to automatically do local or
beholder. Whatever your IT issues or desktop consolidation. However remote data replication, without the
Virtualisation has the answer, or at they believe there are a number of need for the user to intervene.
least part of it. hurdles that must be overcome for Thus IT departments practically get
The adoption of virtualisation in server-hosted virtual desktops (vdi) to business continuity and disaster recovery
the enterprise has been particularly achieve its full potential. This topic is as a by product of virtualisation.
swift at the server level with Forrester explored in detail later in this issue. The virtualisation of the IT
Research reporting in its late 2007 IDC thus believes the real next infrastructure still has some way
survey, ‘x86 virtualisation Adopters wave of adoption will be centered to go as vendors add more and
Hit The Tipping Point’ that server on mitigating the problems and costs more functionality. However we
virtualisation has gone mainstream. associated with system downtime. are starting to see much of this
They found that half of surveyed IDC estimates that server downtime functionality now being built into
enterprises are using x86 server cost organizations roughly $140 billion product offerings as standard.
virtualisation today, and that two-thirds worldwide in lost worker productivity That means that the channel will
will by 2009. and revenue in 2007. need to move on from making its
They also found that enterprises "By directly addressing the need money selling the infrastructure
using virtualisation have an average for cost effective business continuity, to developing services around
of 24% of servers virtualised today virtualisation will alter the economics virtualisation. The move by Microsoft
and expect to reach 45% by 2009. of IT a second time," said John and Citrix into this space has already
Crucially, these users are gaining Humphreys, program vice president forced VMware to separate out its
experience with virtualisation with in IDC's Enterprise Platform Group. Hypervisor and do deals to bundle it
23% of enterprises now having at least "More importantly, mobility will be with servers.
two years of deployment experience, the defining feature that will move This is a sign that the virtualisation
and that will rise to 51% by 2009. virtualisation beyond just a tool market is maturing and that the money
However according to IDC, for consolidation. The embrace of will no longer be made from selling
though the rapid embrace of mobility will allow customers to use the basic products.
virtualisation has helped change virtualisation for business continuity,
the economics of IT by not only capacity planning, and eventually
lowering capital costs but also as a solution in delivering service-
reducing operational costs. As oriented computing."
customers become more familiar It is obvious that the storage
with the technology, virtualisation vendors also believe that virtualisation
is increasingly being used to solve is moving on from server consolidation
more than just server consolidation to business continuity with a whole
challenges. raft of announcements around
In their report ‘The Future of virtualised storage.
Virtualisation: Leveraging Mobility In particular in these offerings the
to Move Beyond Consolidation’ vendors have moved beyond just
released this May, they state that making their network storage solutions
JUNE 2008 8020 EUROPA 21
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