Virtualisation: Round Table

The cloud 'security strategy' involves adopting security solutions that seamlessly span physical, virtual and private/hybrid/public cloud environments while simplifying operational and management complexities. Roundtable attendees got down to business, discussion the 'practical steps' and issues and opportunities involved in securing the cloud environment. Jennifer O'Brien reports.

The datacentre of the future is shaped by a number of forces including commoditisation, virtualisation, integration and innovation. A group of industry experts sat down to discuss the key factors shaping the evolution of the datacentre of the future and its impact on the channel.

Virtualisation is dominant in the enterprise market today, but how is it faring in the SMB space? ARN brought together a collection of channel players and vendors to discuss the opportunities and challenges for virtualisation technology in the smaller end of town.

ARN recently held a roundtable on selling virtualisation to SMBs. Attached are highlights from the recent event.

One highly-debated topic raised during the roundtable was whether resellers were investing in building managed and cloud services to meet increased customer demand.

While the case for server virtualisation in the SMB market is intensifying, many partners around the table were less convinced about short-term take-up of desktop virtualisation.

One of the questions raised by Dell’s Jon McBride was how resellers were taking virtualisation in their customer base to the next level. While many clients claim to have deployed virtualisation extensively, a bit of digging shows many only have about 10 per cent of their environment on virtual technology.

Growing popularity of hosting, cloud and the managed services model are raising questions around whether telcos will again threaten the traditional systems integration channel in the SMB space.

Cloud computing is a transformative phenomenon affecting all manner of channel and end-user organisations. ARN brought together several industry representatives to discuss where cloud computing adoption is today, and ways IT providers can monetise this broad-reaching opportunity.

Mobility and cloud computing are just some of the latest IT trends impacting the perception of desktop virtualisation. ARN recently brought together a group of industry thought-leaders to discuss the benefits and challenges of delivering desktop virtualisation, as well as how the economic climate is affecting take-up.

Virtualisation was without doubt, the most widely discussed technology last year, and one of the most successfully deployed. And as customers look to rein in costs, and mitigate risk to avoid succumbing to the economic downturn, virtualisation is also proving one of the best opportunities for the channel this year.

Virtual desktops are being touted as a way of delivering applications to any user via any device. So does this brave new mobile world mean curtains for the humble PC? ARN recently brought together a panel of industry professionals to hear their views.