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What is Virtualisation?
Virtualisation is an approach to IT that pools and shares resources so utilisation is optimised and supply automatically meets demand. To achieve this, a holistic approach is used through the integration of processes and technologies. This new virtual view of the resources is not restricted by the implementation or the physical configuration of underlying resources.
What are the market drivers and applications for Virtualisation?
- Challenging the IT infrastructures that have evolved
Traditional, distributed IT environments are often silos where both technology and human resources are aligned around an application or business function. Capacity is fixed, resources are over-provisioned to meet peak demand and systems are complex and difficult to change. Average utilisation rates of 20-30% are not uncommon contributing to high costs and wasted IT resources and funds. Virtualisation lets users pool and share servers, storage, networking and other resources that comprise the IT infrastructure, and allocate these resources across an organisation’s applications and processes, to meet the changing demands of business.
- IT cost of ownership
Costs in traditional IT environments are often based on owning and operating the entire vertical infrastructure – even when under-utilised. Capital expenditures are often unpredictable and funding becomes difficult to justify. In a virtualised IT environment, costs can become utility based, with cost-centres across the business only paying for the IT resources they use, which in turn provides a true reflection of IT demand and expenditures within the organisation.
- Reducing Risk
Security breaches, breaks in service delivery and scope to fall-foul of IT governance and compliance criteria can occur in both centralised and distributed IT environments. Understanding what is contained within the IT estate is the real issue, and then taking control over all these devices, users and applications. A virtualised IT environment provides these key benefits.
- Improving IT service levels
A traditional IT environment often does not mirror the needs of the organisations varied users, leaving some users significantly under resourced in terms of access to critical IT resources. With a virtualised infrastructure, people, processes and technology are focused on meeting service levels, capacity is allocated dynamically, resources are optimised and the entire infrastructure is simplified and flexible.
- Building flexible, adaptive IT infrastructures
A standardised, modular infrastructure can help maximise the agility and cost benefits of virtualisation via a holistic approach to standardisation, encompassing industry-standard architectures, modular building blocks and consistent implementation. With a flexible pool of modular, virtual resources, management solutions then provide the dynamic link between IT resources, business processes and business priorities to allow organisations to fully achieve business agility.
Virtual environments overview
- Desktop - Desktop Virtualisation refers to the delivery of a complete virtual operating system. Virtualised desktops can be either client-hosted, or centralised on a server in the data centre, with end users accessing their virtual PCs on the server using screen, keyboard and mouse at their localised client terminals.
- Application - Virtualised Applications can be managed on a centralised server and streamed to a user’s machine and run in an isolation environment, so applications become an on-demand service that is always available and up-to-date. Also allows applications to be copied to portable media and then imported to run on client computers without need to install them.
- Server - Server Virtualisation can be used to eliminate server sprawl, to make more efficient use of server resources, improving server availability, assisting in disaster recovery, testing and development and to centralise server administration.
- Network - Network Virtualisation combines hardware and software network resources and network functionality into a single, software-based administrative entity, a virtual network.
- Storage - Storage Virtualisation is the apparent pooling of data from multiple storage devices, even different types of storage devices, into what appears to be a single more easily managed resource.
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