it was just over 3 years ago when my colleague, Ray Kingdon, explained to me the concept of Virtualisation (Virtualization to those 'over the pond') and the work he was project managing for numerous UK banks. When he explained under-utilisation, reduced energy footprint, disaster recovery gains and one machine replacing 100, I was sold. In fact, my mind was exploding with the possibilities of what this could mean.
While there is clearly no question of the gains virtualisation offers to enterprise and datacentre environments, can the same technology truly deliver the comparable gains to the Small to Medium-sized Businesses (SMB) market? Most importantly, can the general SMB be bothered, especially with the current economic environment.
We're convinced the gains are there. From a server perspective SMB may have up to 10 servers but more than likely 2 to 3. Virtualising these individual servers down to the single machine almost irrespective of platform, has proven cost effective with excellent gains in resource use and disaster recovery implications.
It's becoming easier and less costly to achieve, with significant vendors now in the mix.
From a desktop perspective, earlier versions of Virtualisation enabled simultaneous operating systems to function, if not a little shakily. They did work though. From our perspective this meant businesses looking to depart from the PC platform could still keep a toe in. Earlier versions of VMware and Parallels have now been replaced by stronger, easier and more integral versions.
The possibilities continue to grow, from the Mac-based business wishing to run a SAGE Accountancy network (Windows only) up to the financial institution consolidating thousands of server instances. In fact, some commentators are questioning where it will all end. How many virtual machines can you realistically operate and maintain? Welcome, the virtual server farms or elastic compute clouds. It's big and it's happening.
As with change, it's a commitment and belief in both the gains for the business and the concrete technological gains the new concepts can bring to the table.
Further reading:
http://bmighty.informationweek.com/hardware_software/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=218600641&cid=RSSfeed_bMighty_All
http://blogs.zdnet.com/virtualization/?p=1226
http://www.parallels.com/uk/products/server/mac/
http://blogs.zdnet.com/virtualization/?p=1240
A commentary on current and future technology for SMB's with a specific interest in Apple Mac, Cloud and Mobile working.
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