| According to Gartner, around 15-20 per cent of IT | | | | provisioning cycle that would have been attributed to |
| workloads are already virtualised, and this figure could | | | | hardware lead times and 64 days of resource effort |
| potentially treble to 50-60 per cent by 2012. Such | | | | in racking and configuring the servers. |
| positive adoption is easily explained when you | | | | The London Borough of Hillingdon now runs 94 virtual |
| consider that the resultant benefits read like an IT | | | | servers on just three physical machines which it |
| director's wish list. A typical virtual machine | | | | claims is a 97 per cent reduction in server hardware - |
| environment brings significantly reduced hardware, | | | | saving it £20,000 per year by reducing power |
| energy and space costs - in terms of power and | | | | consumption from 34kWh to 1.1 kWh and an extra |
| cooling alone, virtual servers are reckoned to be | | | | £50,000 per year by removing the need to expand |
| 700-800% more efficient than a traditional server. As | | | | its IT team. |
| well as the cost and environmental savings associated | | | | There are many more projects out there that prove |
| with consolidation, virtualisation can also help | | | | the theoretical benefits do indeed translate into |
| strengthen operational resilience and data security; | | | | reality, providing plenty of encouragement to those |
| expedite the provisioning and scaling of IT resources; | | | | still 'thinking about it' to get on and do it. But while |
| enable the rapid deployment of applications; and | | | | the early majority ponder and plan, the early |
| streamline back-end administration. | | | | adopters are already focusing on the further |
| A recent virtualisation project by international law | | | | leveraging of virtualisation technologies. They are |
| firm Irwin Mitchell affords a perfect illustration of its | | | | starting to look beyond their original software |
| potential. The firm was able to house 143 virtual | | | | development and server consolidation credentials and |
| machines on 11 physical servers, allowing the removal | | | | assess their suitability for one of the most critical |
| of 132 physical servers from its data centre; at the | | | | disciplines within any modern day organisation - |
| same time it saved an average 201 days of the | | | | business continuity. |