Microsoft: The Promise of Virtualisation
Virtualization is on everybody's mind. And with good reason.
It's a critical, sea-changing concept with wide-reaching
implications. The idea that you can make pools of dynamic resources
with unlimited capacity available to users anywhere at any time is
extraordinary.
Because it is so vital, Microsoft is committed to driving the
adoption of virtualization. However, unlike today's conventional
wisdom, we don't view virtualization as an isolated, tactical tool.
Rather, since virtualization can have a profound impact on your
entire operations, from the data center to the desktop, we believe
it should be embraced as part of an enterprise-wide infrastructure
strategy.
At Microsoft, virtualization is a means to enabling our
long-standing vision of Dynamic IT, where people and computers get
the resources they need the moment they need them. That's why we're
applying company-wide resources - in everything from product
development and licensing strategies to interoperability
initiatives and strategic partnerships - to make virtualization a
reality for all of our customers.
Harnessing Virtualization to Meet Dynamic Business Demands
The trend is clear: As computing becomes more ubiquitous, more
powerful and more portable, it is dramatically improving
businesses' ability to provide employees with the capabilities
needed to capitalize on new opportunities. At the same time,
however, the cost and complexity of managing all of this has never
been higher. For IT departments, the result is a growing number of
contradictory requirements: agility and ease of access vs. security
and compliance; performance vs. cost; innovation vs. reliability
and continuity. In many ways, the biggest challenge that IT
professionals face today is resolving the tension inherent in
trying to create an information infrastructure that provides both
flexibility and control.
Helping IT professionals find the right balance between these
seemingly mutually exclusive imperatives is one of Microsoft's most
important priorities. To do that, we are focused on technology
innovation that will enable businesses to build dynamic IT systems
that have the flexibility, intelligence, speed and power to adapt
to changing business conditions, while providing the control that
is so imperative to success.
In order to achieve Dynamic IT, companies need a virtualization
strategy that mobilizes and manages the resources of the entire
infrastructure, both virtual and physical, to meet fast-moving
business demands. The right virtualization strategy - applied
within an effective licensing structure - can enable IT to deliver
faster and more reliable service, free up critical resources to
address larger business goals, reduce costs, and ultimately achieve
competitive advantage through business agility.
Effective Virtualization: Creating the Foundation for Dynamic
IT
The concept of virtualization is not as new as some people may
think: virtual machine technology for time-sharing on mainframes
dates back to the 1960s. It's the confluence of challenging
business demands and the emergence of virtualization technologies
that span the entire stack, which is making virtualization so
essential for today's organizations.
The most commonly cited benefit of virtualization is cost
reduction. While this can be significant, saving money is just a
part of the value virtualization can deliver. We feel strongly that
virtualization is a transformational technology that, if
effectively employed, can help companies create IT systems that are
not only highly efficient and cost effective, but that have the
self-awareness to adapt automatically and instantly to deliver the
capabilities needed as business conditions change.
To make this possible, virtualization - the act of isolating or
unbinding one computing resource from others - should be applied to
all layers of a computing stack, from the data center to the
desktop. Rather than locking the various layers together - the
operating system (OS) to the hardware, the application to the OS,
and the user interface to the local machine - we employ
virtualization to loosen the direct reliance these parts have on
each other.
Such data center-to-desktop virtualization makes it possible to
quickly deploy new capabilities without needing to acquire new
hardware and configure components. Testing requirements and
application compatibility issues are reduced, automating processes
is simplified, and disaster recovery capabilities are easier to
implement. On the desktop, virtualization can help create an
infrastructure that enables employees to access the applications
they need, no matter where they are located.
However, along with these tremendous benefits, virtualization
can actually add much more complexity and cost to your environment.
Think of virtualization as supercharging your IT engine. Everything
has more power, speed and flexibility. But because they are
virtualized, you may not know where your assets reside, how many
you really have - think virtual machine sprawl, or how to juggle
and optimize them. Experience has taught us that, the more you
virtualize, the more essential management becomes. This cannot be
overstated. Without strong management capabilities, the benefits
you gain from virtualization technologies will be greatly
diminished. Management is glue that brings everything together and
unlocks virtualization's real potential. Not only does it pinpoint
where virtualization products reside since they are no longer tied
to a single location, it lets you easily allocate the right
resources to the right people in real-time. And because your
infrastructure will still have physical components, effective
management solutions must enable you to control both physical and
virtual worlds in a unified, easy manner.
The real power of virtualization comes when companies implement
an integrated virtualization strategy that extends across their IT
infrastructure, along with management solutions that span both
virtual and physical resources. Only then can you effectively
leverage virtualization as a building block for Dynamic IT.