INTELLIGENT BRANDS // Cloud
Maximising virtualisation
investments
I
n technology, we often seem seduced
into chasing the latest shiny object.
Cloud! Containers! Orchestration!
IoT! Big Data! These are all well and
good and can not only deliver significant
value but can enable new classes of
applications and revenue streams over
time. That said, it’s worthwhile for
IT decision-makers to pause to think
about practical ways to increase the
value of existing investments while
simultaneously planning for exciting
future opportunities, writes Gordon Haff,
Technology Evangelist, Red Hat.
Some people might be thinking that
virtualisation is yesterday’s news.
But it continues to play a major role
within just about every enterprise IT
infrastructure whether measured by
the number of applications it touches,
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INTELLIGENTCIO
the expense of supporting it, or the
number of administrators needed to
manage it. At the same time, it’s often
not used efficiently. At Directions 2016,
IDC Group Vice President for Enterprise
Infrastructure, Al Gillen, noted that
virtual machine (VM) density is stalling
out at about 10 VMs per server and
between 30% to 50% server utilisation.
This leaves ample room for improved
efficiencies and financial value.
Modernising virtualisation can take a
variety of forms. I’m going to focus on
three pragmatic areas of value:
Get things done faster
Internal activities, such as provisioning
servers or interacting with third-party
systems, take away from the time
that your system administrators can
spend on other, potentially higher
value tasks. Furthermore, application
developers and other IT customers
may be stuck waiting for those tasks
to be completed. Faster cycle times for
internal activities can bring benefits
across the entire organisation.
These faster internal processes can,
in turn, lead to what really matters:
accelerating customer-facing activities.
Whether responding more quickly
to customer requests and improving
customer satisfaction as a result, or
bringing new products and services to
market sooner, increased speed generally
delivers direct business benefits.
Technologies that can help get things
done faster include: self-service
portals (which allow delegating tasks,
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