Small business attitudes towards virtualization

With virtualization becoming firmly embedded into small business, it’s interesting to see that many small businesses are still wary about taking the plunge and implementing virtualization. Before a small business decides to take the step towards virtualization it’s important that they do extensive planning; carefully assessing business needs and requirements. So with that in mind let’s address the best way small businesses can implement virtualization and the benefits that it can offer.

Last year an independent study was conducted on behalf of Dell and Intel ‘manage your data: virtualization for small businesses’ which highlighted a lack of understanding, among smaller businesses, that virtualization can help support and enable business growth. Of the 1,150 small businesses and IT decision makers surveyed across Europe, only 41 percent currently use server virtualization. Furthermore, companies with fewer than 25 employees are slower to install server virtualization as they believe they are less likely to see its benefits compared to businesses that have between 25-100 employees.

Virtualization provides businesses with the ability to centralize administrative tasks while improving scalability and overall hardware utilisation. It also eliminates unnecessary hardware and maintenance costs by creating a much more flexible IT infrastructure that allows the IT team to quickly and efficiently provision virtual machines as and when they are needed; scaling the system to support the business’s needs at any given time. Implemented properly, it will allow a company to run multiple applications and operating systems independently on a single server, or dynamically move them from one server to another to allow for better resource sharing.

Implementing virtualization does not have to be difficult or expensive but lack of sufficient preparation can leave a small business prey to server sprawl. Virtualization is a not a one-size-fits all proposition, with multiple delivery models to choose from its important to create a strategy in order to get the best solution for your company. Here are some tips to consider for successful virtualization deployment:

• Work with the right partner. Success in virtualization will depend on your ability to use IT in the best way for your business needs. Expertise from the right partner is instrumental in answering your questions, helping you to save time, guiding you towards the right choices, and in giving you access to best practices to ensure that you get the most from your investment. Companies will need to think about the future and make sure that what they implement now will support their business over the next five to ten years. Working with a partner does not need to be a daunting prospect; there is an ever-increasing array of vendors and partners in the IT space that can help.
• Research your options. Look for the right solution for your business, including those that provide cross-platform systems management for both the virtual and physical machines, and ones that provide easy-to-use tools for gathering statistics and applying dynamic policies to better allocate physical resources. It is also important to support the integration of virtualization with legacy management tools and to create more flexibility in your IT infrastructure.
• Agree on operational and financial goals. Your best virtualization strategy depends on your goals and on the demands of your specific environment. Virtualization will require a number of operational and financial changes and you should be prepared for the investment that will be required, and for the changes that it will have on the business.
There are some fundamental benefits of implementing virtualization which small businesses need to consider including:
• Reduce costs by increasing energy efficiency and reducing hardware with server consolidation – Fewer physical servers means a reduction in overhead and management costs and is often one of the main reasons many businesses look at virtualization as a way to streamline processes. Most companies do not use their servers to full capacity for fear that they will crash; by using virtualization it is possible to turn separate single purpose servers into one multi-purpose server allowing it to take on more capacity whilst reducing space. Virtualization enables each server to be used to its fullest potential.
• Building up business continuity through improved disaster recovery solutions – Virtualization provides a more robust infrastructure in case of failure. Businesses can set up a virtual server that can be represented by a file and then copies of the servers themselves can be stored remotely for disaster recovery. In an emergency, a company’s entire virtualized environment can be remotely archived and the backup virtual server accessed by end users, with little or no downtime. Virtualization ensures business continuity by reducing the risk of data loss, making disaster recovery simpler and faster.
• Cloud Computing - One natural component of virtualization which should be considered is cloud computing. Small businesses are already setting the example when it comes to cloud computing, mainly because they do not have the resources or the time to manage IT in their businesses. Investing in both virtualization and the cloud enables small businesses to be more flexible in terms of their working structure.
Migrating to virtualization isn’t a decision any business should take lightly, implementing virtualization into a small business does not have to be difficult or expensive. If you work with the right partner, have clear objectives and have the future of the business in mind, it can produce noticeable benefits.