Virtualization: The time is now

Keeping up with the latest and greatest of technological advancements can be really hard to do, especially when you’re running a business. There are simply too many other things to worry about before upgrading, particularly if the old infrastructure is still getting the job done.

That being said, relying on older technology because it hasn’t broken down yet is an extremely inefficient way to run a business. This is especially true when talking about server virtualization. There are so many benefits to upgrading to a virtualized environment that we took some time to write up a list of why you should consider virtualization right now:

1. Reduce your ecological footprint

Everybody working in technology can attest to how much energy is consumed by IT systems every year. Time writer Bryan Walsh stated that in 2013, the “information-communications-technologies ecosystem” took up about 10 percent of the entire world’s electricity generation. He even went on to state that the world uses 50 percent more energy to move data around than it does keeping planes in the sky.

Entirely too much energy is used within IT and virtualization can help.

This massive amount of energy used simply for upkeep of physical systems shows the massive ecological impact server virtualization offers the world. Server virtualization takes multiple physical machines and brings them to the digital space, storing them all on a single piece of hardware.

This means we can get the processing power of multiple servers while only using valuable resources to power one of them. From purely an environmental standpoint, server virtualization just makes sense.

2. Reduce your costs

While you are most likely more than happy to reduce your company’s intake of natural resources, you’re probably more concerned about what server virtualization can bring to your company in a more financial space. This is yet another area where virtualized machines dominate their physical counterparts.

Having some sort of virtualized environment is going to seriously cut your company’s electric bill. Server virtualization is where you’ll see the majority of these benefits. A lot of server processing power goes unused when the machine is only running a single environment. By combining multiple servers on a shared physical platform, less overall energy is used. This accounts for a huge amount of savings.

Server virtualization can also bring about some great savings in terms of hardware costs. When you virtualize assets, the machines running your operations may be owned and operated by a managed service provider at its specific data center. These facilities are state-of-the-art, which means you’ll be able to benefit from the best hardware money can buy without actually purchasing it yourself.

Finally, but perhaps most importantly, virtualization can substantially cut the costs and complexity of a disaster recovery solution. The time it takes to recover after a disastrous event is severely reduced when operating in a virtualized environment. This has a lot to do with the fact that you won’t have to rebuild servers or applications after a disaster with server virtualization. The shorter recovery time will allow you to meet RTO/RPO goals at a fraction of the cost of a physical server.

3. You get to focus on internal IT goals

For your IT department, this is going to be an absolutely life-changing benefit if and when you decide to embrace virtualization. IT workers are generally spread pretty thin in the modern workplace. Conducting business in this age means having the technology and systems to do so, and making sure those systems are running is a huge time sink.

A survey conducted by Forrester Research of IT professionals from more than 3,700 companies found that the IT department is constantly putting out fires, with an average of 72 percent of the budget being used for “keep-the-lights-on” functions. By utilizing server virtualization, you can push many of these problems off onto your MSP. While your virtualization provider works out the problems your server is having, your IT department can get back to focusing on internal IT goals. You get the experience of an MSP’s employees in terms of hardware maintenance and repair while also utilizing your own workers to build your business. It’s the purest definition of a win-win scenario.

If you’d like to see what else server virtualization can do for you, or if you’d like to learn more about this amazing technology, make sure to check out ISG Technology’s virtualization page.