Approach Virtualization

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Approaching Virtualization

Approaching Virtualization

The IT world is on the cusp of a new technology innovation movement that is changing the dynamics of managing IT environments that rivals the advent of the Internet. This movement is not the product of a single technological breakthrough, but rather a convergence of business, financial, and technology drivers. Virtualization is dramatically reducing the costs of IT environments. Virtualization is also creating a dichotomy never witnessed in the IT world – it offers the promise of increasing flexibility and reducing the complexity of managing IT environments while presenting a new challenge in how to approach, plan, execute, and manage the Virtual IT environment. We will witness the ability of organizations to double, triple, quadruple its IT capacity in the same IT footprint.

The Virtualization Challenge

After meeting with almost 100 CIO’s from August 1st – September 9th at a series of IT Executive Roundtables held in Columbus, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Boston, Richmond, Charlotte, Atlanta, Tampa, and Fort Lauderdale, several perceptions became abundantly clear.

Few, if any of these organizations have developed a holistic and comprehensive approach to Virtualization.
Most CIO’s still perceived Virtualization as a way to consolidate X86 servers.
While many CIO’s intrinsically realized the benefits of Virtualization, few IT executives fully appreciate the business efficiencies and financial impact the promise of virtualization will bring to their organization.

When asked about some of the challenges IT executives face that lead them to consider virtualization strategies, their responses included proliferation of servers, poor utilization, power and cooling inefficiencies, lengthy deployment times, increasing Data Center costs, and obstacles implementing a viable DR plan and its execution.

The Virtualization Promise

Implementing a holistic approach to Virtualization is a competitive differentiator. It drives top line revenue, increases EBITDA (dramatically changing IT operating expenses), and brings a set of technology-based efficiencies that separates successful implementations from the rest of the pack.

This approach to Virtualization means more than server consolidation. It reduces the amount of data that needs to be stored, archived, and retrieved. It means a dramatic reduction in power, cooling, floor space, software licensing (and software licensing support), hardware maintenance, and everyday care and feeding. This approach means organizations can reallocate critical IT resources to support the application that make these organizations money and run their business units. This approach to virtualization means a more secure and compliant IT environment. The promise of virtualization means tying together five (5) critical components of an organization’s IT infrastructure.

Server Consolidation and Virtualization

Many companies have implemented a virtualization strategy around server consolidation. Even the simplest approach to virtualization produces an ROI that cannot be ignored. Yet, most of these companies believe that this approach to virtualization is merely the purvey of their X86/Windows environment. The fact is server virtualization strategies could and should be a component of an organization’s UNIX environment, as well. What does it mean to your organization when it can reduce the number of servers by 10 or 15:1, or replacing CPU counts 5 to 8:1; make your servers (and applications) more available, and nearly eliminate downtime.

Storage Virtualization and Consolidation

Almost every company has 100% of its storage allocated, but few utilize more than 35% of their disk space. Yet, even this number is dwarfed when one considers that a deduplication and thin provisioning strategy can decrease the amount of storage an organization backs up by as much as 70%. Blend a storage virtualization strategy with a traditional archiving strategy – what does this promise hold? It means decreasing backup routines by 60%+, decreasing time of recovery of critical data by 500%. What is the impact on your staff with few, if any, nighttime shifts, accessing applications 365, 7x24?

Desktop Virtualization

Desktop virtualization means a dramatic reduction in the number of hours IT personnel spend supporting desktops by as much as 70%. Organizations that adopt this approach are able to push out new applications, in addition to patches and fixes to the desktop, in minutes rather than hours, days or weeks. Even more important to organizations impacted by SOX, HIPAA, PCI compliance, and other regulatory oversight, desktop virtualization nearly eliminates the exposure associated with the desktop and desktop users.

Application Virtualization

An application virtualization strategy enables organization to bring applications on-line weeks earlier, make applications more highly available for your developers, allows every version of an application to be available to the developers with the clicks of a few keystrokes. While few organizations have adopted this approach to virtualization, the economic impact of this approach will drive more top-line revenue than any other component of that organization’s IT strategy.

Bringing Virtualization to Your Disaster Recovery/Business Continuance strategy

The virtualization approach to disaster recovery dramatically minimizes the risks most organizations take by taking short cuts in their DR and business continuance strategies. It allows organizations to make applications available to users in a matter of minutes rather than hours or days, allow companies to use unlike (not necessarily identical) technology in the disaster recovery site, and eliminate the need for bare-metal restores (not that most companies can execute that strategy, anyway.)

Why Most Virtualization Strategies Fail in Their Potential

Most organizations fail to realize even a small percentage of the benefits that virtualization can bring to their business.

Organizations rifle shot virtualization initiatives. There is no holistic or comprehensive strategy to harness the Promise of Virtualization.
Organizations that implement virtualization and the companies that provide virtualization solutions do so piece-meal. There is no methodology, no line in the sand, no true discovery and assessment that allows an organization to develop a virtualization roadmap.
Most organizations cannot conduct an independent risk and operational analysis of how virtualization can impact their IT organization and business units.
Most organizations are not “change ready,” and are held hostage by the inaction and inertia of their own IT organizations.
Organizations have a strong need for comprehensive virtualization management approach cited by major analyst firms.
Most organizations implement an inconsistent, disconnected management approaches for physical and virtual environments, causing havoc in datacenters
Most organizations fail to design and implement an ongoing management strategy of their investments in virtualizations.

Champion’s Virtualization Methodology

Champion has designed and implemented more than 1,000 virtual environments. Champion holds more than 400 certifications in virtualization-related technologies and has developed an assessment capability second to none. Champion’s methodology is the time-tested methodology of every firm that takes an independent approach around its expertise.

Executive Meeting – to gain an understanding of the business and financial drivers of the client and help position how a Virtualization strategy can impact the overall goals and objectives of the client
Discovery – with both the business unit and IT organization to ascertain the organizational structure and flow and to assess the “change-readiness” of the client
Present example assessment deliverables to enable the client to make this intangible – “tangible”
Identify a “slice” of the organization to prove a virtualization approach – for enterprise organizations
Conduct a Virtualization and Data Management Assessment
Present the finding and recommendations of these assessments
Design and implement virtual solutions based on the assessment findings and recommendations
Simultaneous, develop a holistic virtualization strategy for the client
Implement a comprehensive training and knowledge transfer program of the new virtual solutions
Develop a virtualization management strategy with the client

(Champion has developed comprehensive skill sets around near every major player in the virtual world. Champion is one of 30 VMware Premier partners in the world, a VMware Authorized Consulting Firm, one of the first NetApp Authorized Professional Services Partners, an IBM Premier Business Partner since the program began, and possesses a litany of other solution skill sets – Microsoft, Citrix, Acronis, Certeon, Oracle, Vkernel, and more).

To learn more about Approaching Virtualization, contact David Boim, VP of Marketing: boim@championsg.com or Stacy Mancinelli, Marketing Manager: smancinelli@championsg.com or call 800-771-7000 x243.