Today’s marketplace is quickly developing and pushing for new innovations. For businesses, this means keeping their IT environment agile and updated. Startups and smaller businesses have been achieving this through virtualizing their IT infrastructure. These companies can leapfrog the up-front costs of business growth and better manage the increasingly complex IT networks. There are three significant competitive advantages that are driving virtualization expansion. Here’s a brief introduction to how virtualization is accomplishing this right now and what trends are emerging for the very near future.
Depending on their IT networks for functional operations, businesses face the increasing threats of possible server outages and cyber-attacks. Natural disasters or cyber-criminals can cripple a business in a matter of minutes (or even seconds). In the past, physical backups in the same location were subject to these security threats. Productivity took a nosedive as the system was restored. Today, virtualization allows for a rapid failover and recovery that can be accomplished with minimal disruption and data loss. Virtualization mitigates security concerns because a thin or zero client can be cloned, backed up, and restored remotely very quickly. The centralized information can even restore multiple clients simultaneously.
Pushing out new software changes and patches across many individual and different devices and operating systems was the migraine of the IT department. Just as with disaster recovery, centralized management streamlines the management, deployment, security, and restoration of critical systems. Virtualization of desktops and BYOD-based enterprise software allows virtual machines to be cloned, configured, modified, and deployed without downtime, freeing system administrators to focus on their more advanced IT projects.
Virtualization is based on making the most use of available server resources. Greater availability of server resources means doing more with fewer physical servers. Not only does that reduce the amount of required working capital, it lowers the cost of maintenance and the complexity of IT management. Servers and firewalls put off a great deal of heat, which needs to be cooled with additional energy resources. Fewer servers translates into lower energy costs in running the business. If server crashes and slowdowns do occur, the information can be transferred, and work doesn’t have to come to a standstill.
Greater global competition during a tighter economic climate has been especially hard on businesses as they try to keep up with all the changes in customer expectations. A more efficient IT infrastructure with centralized information and rapid recovery takes the stress out of IT management, allowing personnel to take care of core business functions rather than putting out fires. As markets evolve, virtualization will continue to deliver real-world solutions to the next generation of operational challenges at the speed of business.
To accelerate your business through virtualization and other solutions, contact one of our experts today at 720.613.3031
