Butler virtualisation Report
Published January 16, 2008 at 11:12 pm · Filed under Comms / IT
Virtualisation to become dominant technology in datacentres
Businesses must adapt corporate culture to reap all the benefits of virtualisation, Butler Group claims in a new report
Infrastructure Virtualisation technology, which allows multiple operating systems and environments to run on the same piece of hardware as if they were separate physical servers, is set to become the dominant technology in data centres within the next two to three years, according to a new report from Butler Group.
The Infrastructure Virtualisation report identifies three main factors that are driving the take-up of virtualisation: the need to reduce energy consumption and carbon footprints; the need to respond to market opportunities faster; and the increased shift towards automation as a means of reducing operational costs.
According to Butler Group, IT Virtualisation is no longer regarded merely as a way of saving costs through server consolidation. Because it now encompasses networks, storage, applications, desktop, and data centres, it is increasingly being viewed by CIOs and CEOs as a strategic technology that organisations should consider as a way of breaking the rigid links between applications, physical hardware, platforms and middleware and end users.
Butler Group estimates that an organisation currently operating 250 dual core servers can save £2 million over three years through more efficient power and cooling, reduced support costs, increased flexibility and the ability to respond to business dynamics.
It calculates that a power saving of £78,000 per 1,000 PCs per year can be realised by moving from a full desktop PC infrastructure to a server-hosted desktop virtualisation solution. In another example of a financial benefit, Butler Group estimates that organisations can save £4,000 per 1,000 helpdesk calls per month through the promotion of user self-service via the utilisation of application virtualisation technologies to reduce helpdesk calls.
However, Butler Group warns that Infrastructure Virtualisation requires businesses to change their corporate culture from one based on self-autonomous business units to one in which resources are pooled and shared.
This shift necessitates a more transparent structure so that management can be performed based on corporate priorities. It also involves a shift from a business unit-funded project structure (where the head of department bids for and provides the initial capital for the IT project with the on-going maintenance expense being funded from a central corporate budget), towards a mixed, pay-as-you-go model, where the corporate budget funds the capital costs associated with providing the underlying infrastructure, and the business units are charged for the services they consume and pay for the deployment of any new services required.
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