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Server virtualization is a technology that has taken hold with amazing speed and is now firmly entrenched with overwhelming success in many data centers. This perspective document recaps why you should be moving ahead quickly with virtualization (if you haven’t already done so), what the implications are for IT and the business, and what the future holds as the ramifications of virtualization become apparent. It is important that CIOs understand the technical, political, and organizational effects of this new technology so that they are better prepared to discuss virtualization plans with their technical staff.
Analysis
Consider the following:
If you don’t have a set of production class applications running on virtual servers, your firm is now officially an organizational “laggard”; certainly not an “early adopter” or even a “fast follower.” “Laggard” may be too kind an epithet. How about “Last Follower”?
For the overwhelming majority of Fortune 500 companies, this means using VMware’s products to get into virtualization orbit. To a much smaller extent, it may mean using Microsoft Virtual Server, Virtual Iron software, or Xen Open Source solutions, which are sold commercially as XenSource (recently purchased by Citrix).
Server virtualization has been the single most successful technological development in the data center realm over the past year to 18 months. For those CIOs who saw the trend and are well down the virtualization vapor trail: Congratulations! Now come the hard questions. What are the implications of a virtualized server infrastructure? What unintended consequences have IT departments encountered, and where does Burton Group see this new model for computing delivery headed?
My Users Think All This Stuff is Hidden in a Missile Silo in North Dakota. Why Should They Care?
Virtualization is on your bosses and your business peer’s radar (e.g., The Wall Street Journal made 13 references to it in August and September 2007 alone1). It has all the fingerprints of topics near and dear to a CxO’s heart: expense savings, increased flexibility, and new technological innovation that everyone else is using.
The argument can be made that virtualization is an internal IT decision based on efficiency and effectiveness. For IT to deliver the service “cheaper, faster, better,” you must understand both the implications of virtualization to the cost structure, and your ability to deliver better service with increased flexibility. Burton Group calls this the “dynamic data center” in Andrew Kutz’s report “Improving Data Center Energy Efficiency: A Holistic Approach.”
Business management sees virtualization as an opportunity to improve its IT cost structure, get more accurate billing, or consolidate their own business unit’s computing resource as a dedicated utility (whether hosted internally or externally).
Riding the Virtualization Rocket: Getting On and Staying On
Occasionally, a disruptive technology event causes IT leaders to reevaluate an “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” approach, and make a recommendation that could have significant implications for IT operations and strategy. Virtualization is an example of this type of technology for the following reasons:
- It achieves savings in data center cooling and power costs
- It can postpone or be an adjunct to a data center expansion
- It generates maintenance savings in hardware costs, especially if it is time to refresh servers
- It reduces staffing needs for server support and simplifies systems management for system administrators, which reduces weekend and overtime needs
- It increases flexibility for hardware provisioning processes
- It enables new software development processes that can speed development and improve quality
- It reduces time invested in disaster recovery tests from days to hours
What Needs to be on the CIO’s Radar
As with most endeavors, the key to successful implementation of virtualized servers is to “walk before you run.” Many IT shops have started with non-mission-critical services and moved up from there. A few shops have even taken virtualization to core services, such as e-mail, to improve continuous availability and failover capabilities.
Important aspects of virtualization that a CIO needs to be tuned into are:
Management tools and staffing
Independent software vendor (ISV) support and contracts
Server Provisioning, backup, and development
Management Tools and Staffing
Managing a virtual environment and the software necessary to do so could have the biggest long-term impact on data center operations. The software tools that enable migration and day-to-day operation are rapidly developing, due in large part to a strong third-party software industry forming around virtualization migration tools.
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