5 Trends That Will Impact Your IT Planning in 2012

Virtualization

Executive Brief

a QuinStreet Excutive Brief. 2012

5 Trends That Will Impact Your IT Planning in 2012

Virtualization
Many of the IT trends that your organization will tackle in 2012 arent new, but that doesnt mean your IT staff can sit still while technology continues to evolve. This Executive Brief is one of five installments in this series that will examine trends you need to include in your IT planning in 2012. What more can possibly be said about virtualization? Quite a bit, actually. Virtualization has been on the radar of IT professionals for a number of years, and in 2012, with the technology maturing and virtualization trickling down to small and medium businesses (SMBs), theres plenty of insight to be gained from a look at how businesses are using virtualization, why theyre using virtualization and why some businesses still havent taken the leap. Small businesses are experiencing growing IT infrastructures at the dawn of 2012, thanks in part to the amount of data they create and store. Yet as the infrastructure grows, they need to maintain or improve their efficiency and agility. When it comes to virtualization solutions, small businesses need an enterprise-class solution that offers initially basic services but can scale in performance and capabilities as the business grows. Medium-sized businesses are also dealing with a growing, more complex IT infrastructure. Medium-sized businesses are also exploring the implementation of enterprise-type functionality like disaster recovery
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and business continuity and they have more business-critical applications than smaller businesses. They are ready to move beyond the basic virtualization solutions they adopted as small businesses. There is one IDC statistic that demonstrates how virtualization is moving to the SMB market: At small businesses, which have yet to adopt server virtualization in large numbers, physical server counts are up; at midsize businesses server counts arent growing. These numbers will likely begin to shift in 2012. According to AMI Partners, 84 percent of small businesses consider server virtualization a very important strategic IT issue.

Maturity of the market: On the customer side, IT organizations are moving their tier one applications to virtualized platforms, something they were wary to do when they started using the technology. On the vendor side, all of the providers are on at least their second major release of their products. Microsoft actually includes its hypervisor, Hyper-V, in the Windows Server 2008 R2 operating system, so there is no additional charge for the technology. Performance: Virtualized servers now provide the performance to host many mission-critical applications such as Microsoft SharePoint, Exchange, and SQL, which users have historically been hesitant to virtualize. High availability: Small businesses are leveraging virtualizations availability features to increase their uptime. For example, the live migration feature in Microsofts Windows Server 2008

Trends in Virtualization
There are a number of trends evident in the virtualization market as the calendar turns to 2012:

5 Trends That Will Impact Your IT Planning in 2012

R2 increases uptime by allowing operating systems to be patched without incurring any downtime. Disaster recovery: Businesses that use virtualization can use it in combination with SAN snapshot and replication features to reduce recovery time and recovery point objectives. Integrated management: Its easier for businesses to integrate their management tools in a heterogeneous solution, more easily aligning the management of physical infrastructure and virtual components. One software solution that does this seamlessly is Microsoft System Center, which provides real-time monitoring of physical and virtual servers and applications. Service management: The move toward service management plays right into the strengths of virtualization because both give increased priority to managing the service rather than the components. Desktop virtualization: Aided by a push from Windows 7, the increasing focus on virtual desktop infrastructure and its positive impact on management, availability and security shows virtualization spreading throughout the business. Multivendor solutions: Because businesses already have an infrastructure in place and arent looking for a rip-and-replace implementation, they are creating virtual environments with components from a number of vendors.

Cloud computing: Businesses of all sizes are showing an interest in cloud computing, and virtualization can help them achieve this goal. Microsoft System Center 2012 offers a private cloud solution. Virtual appliances: Virtual appliances are gaining popularity because they offer simplified delivery of IT services. These trends boil down to three distinct advantages for businesses that use virtualization technology: economic savings, quality of service and strategic agility. Economic savings are achieved by solving the issue of physical server sprawl and cutting the capital expenses that go with buying and maintaining a room full of x86 servers. The quality of service is better because the increased uptime of virtualization helps businesses deliver more consistent service to users. The increased quality, better resiliency and process automation combine to deliver strategic agility to companies that are virtualizing.

Whats Keeping Firms from Virtualizing?

According to TechTarget, two-thirds of organizations have virtualized 50 percent or less of their infrastructure. Businesses that arent adopting virtualization cite server availability monitoring, managing the storage and backup of virtual machines and software licensing complexities among the barriers. At midsize businesses, there is sometimes little to no experience with virtualization, and their limited budgets often dont allow for proper planning for future projects and growth. At the same time, they have a desire to consolidate their aging server infrastructure, especially underutilized servers, and they face management challenges because of their sprawling infrastructures. Small businesses have all of the same concerns, but they still have a fear of managing virtual servers, and the unfamiliarity of small business IT staffers with virtualization makes it worse. The idea of implementing

These trends boil down to three distinct advantages for businesses economic savings, quality of service and strategic agility.
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5 Trends That Will Impact Your IT Planning in 2012

virtualization while also running the existing IT infrastructure presents a problem for IT departments tight on time and resources. Small businesses also face more pressure to justify the cost and ROI of a virtualization project.

without the need for expensive consultants. There is also a preconfigured virtualization solution called Dell vStart, which allows businesses to build out their virtual infrastructure without the need to be a virtualization expert. Dell handles the prep work and creates a solution that is pre-sized, pre-racked, pre-wired and pre-tested for the customers business. vStart is delivered in a single rack, and ships ready to deploy from Dell. It includes single-console management based on either VMware vCenter or Microsoft System Center Essentials, tools that simplify scalability and enabled disaster recovery and business continuity. Dell also offers training and support across the board for SMBs looking to learn best practices in virtualization.

Conclusion
The virtualization market will continue to mature in 2012, with medium-sized businesses expanding their use of virtualization technology and smaller businesses increasing their adoption. SMBs are now well-educated about the benefits of server virtualization and have a better understanding of how it can help them combat server sprawl and consolidate their infrastructure. There are still barriers to server virtualization within the SMB space, including a lack of training and a thorough understanding of what it takes to deploy and maintain a virtualized infrastructure. Dell has a number of solutions that can help SMBs get started in server virtualization, from assessing their current infrastructure to an out-ofthe-box virtualization solution called vStart that is designed to fit into each customers infrastructure.

How Dell Can Help

Dell understands that SMBs can benefit from a move toward server virtualization, and that a number of barriers remain that prevent them from doing so. Thats why Dell and key partners such as Microsoft created solutions and tools that help businesses get started with their server virtualization projects. Dell Performance Analysis Collection Kit (DPACK) is a free tool designed to help businesses make the best decisions, whether its reducing wasteful spending or analyzing opportunities for virtualization or data center expansion. The Dell Remote Virtualization Readiness Assessment (Dell rVRA) delivers fast, cost-effective virtualization solutions to help businesses quickly multiply their server capacity without breaking their IT budgets. In addition, Dell can suggest software management solutions that are fully integrated with the hardware such as Microsofts System Center to manage the virtual infrastructure including server availability monitoring and the storage and backup of virtual machines. A Dell technical team works remotely to provide full reporting of the customers IT environment, including an analysis of ROI and TCO, to ensure Dell finds the right solution
2012, QuinStreet, Inc.