Virtualisation

• Beyond server consolidation
• Virtualising the desktop
• Mistakes and misconceptions
• Broader adoption
• Competitive landscape

DB: It's an easy decision for SMBs because most of them don't have DR. For bigger companies it requires a cultural shift because they'd love to have what virtualisation provides but have already invested so much in physical infrastructure.

PH: That's usually a very simple argument to get past because there's no need to scrap all the expensive equipment they have; it's just a matter of reusing it in a way that makes their processes easier.

RP: One of the key drivers of DR in SMB is compliance because they are going after tenders and Sarbanes-Oxley is pushed down to suppliers.

TW: Being able to take a holistic image offsite from any point of time is the biggest thing I've found for SMB. We have clients that image an entire machine onto disk for compliance.

Peter Pollari, Ingram Micro (PP): We run a regional roadshow and get to hear people telling us they think they have DR because they have another machine running something called Ghost. These small organisations are tendering for fairly significant government infrastructure projects and compliance becomes a big issue. As they succeed, they grow one- or two-men offices and fail to control this spreading network. They have no idea how to back up.

Jason Shannon, CA (JS): Awareness is growing because DR and business continuity requirements are certainly starting to stack up. We are starting to see a lot more interest in what we can offer to help smaller companies with those plans. People tend to start small but even the barriers to offsite DR are significantly lower today. A lot of larger organisations are starting to deploy virtualisation very heavily in their DR infrastructure. We are seeing a lot of growth in both areas.

AG: You come across tech refresh projects once a month or once a quarter and it used to be that virtualisation was a consideration. Now you walk in the door and it's a given so the only discussion is what type of servers you're going to use. Those meetings have changed in the past six months.

JA: The customers love it because we used to evangelise products but now the conversation is about business transformation and that's far more valuable.

TW: Acceptance has been achieved by and large. You still come across the odd CIO who had a bad experience a couple of years ago but there are lots of success stories.

PH: Almost every CIO or IT manager I talk to now gets it. They understand it's not about upfront cost because they save money on operating costs whether it's the physical space they rent off a hosting company, electricity and cooling, or staffing costs. It's realigning IT spend and less money is coming out of company pockets.

RP: The question now is about what they should virtualise because there are still elements of applications that you can't virtualise.