Virtualise for operational excellence

During the troubled times of the Global Financial Crisis, it’s fair to say that many perceived non-critical societal initiatives, started in boom times with such high energy and good intention, fell by the wayside.

And unfortunately, sustainability and preserving our environment within the realm of information technology were among the casualties of the downturn, given that high-profile examples of ‘green IT’ are not yet widely available to demonstrate the considerable and wide-ranging benefits such a strategy can deliver our society. These include, though are not limited to, power consumption, cost savings, productivity, resource allocation and operational efficiency. However, green IT, and associated topics, such as virtualisation and collaboration, were put on the backburner because it was perceived as the wrong time to invest in these technologies, despite them delivering long-term energy, cost and productivity benefits.

In pressing financial markets, IT managers have a difficult conundrum. They need to manage and reduce a very diverse set of costs from their IT budgets. For example, this might include the costs associated with powering core infrastructure and a cooling system to prevent it from overheating. IT managers also need to deliver more and better services which typically have resulted in the deployment of new systems, thus requiring even more power and cooling costs. As these costs increase then the organisation’s carbon footprint will also rise. So with the prospect of carbon taxation in the future, how does an IT manager look to improve server utilisation and reduce costs?

I firmly believe the answer comes through server virtualisation. It’s a technical solution to a business, and societal, challenge.

As we know, many companies run old IT environments with older servers requiring significant rack space which inefficiently consume vast amounts of power, in turn racking up large bills. The opposite solution would see IT managers buying new servers upon which to cram more applications, data and processes; however, this, in my opinion, is an expensive and largely short-term solution. Instead, I believe virtualisation is the welcome and inevitable way forward for cost and for our environment.

Virtualisation can help resolve this challenge. Essentially, virtualisation is extremely clever technology that helps IT managers virtually host all kinds of servers and keep all manner of technology processes up and running without the physical requirement (quantities of hardware, power consumption, cooling etc) to do so. Literally, it means you can have one server running a multitude of different applications (giving a ratio of many applications:one server) with no change to the service delivered. Previously you needed the inverse application:server ratio with each requiring its own power supply and cooling mechanism to ensure reliability.

Put simply, fewer and more efficient servers consume less energy to run, and require less to keep cool. Less hardware and lower energy demands are not only better for our environment, but save in many other areas, such as reduced data centre size, fewer hardware maintenance contracts, less cabling and better hardware utilisation.

As businesses dust themselves off from having braced themselves for tough times, now is the window of opportunity to gain cost benefits and leapfrog the competition.

Furthermore, with web, email and internet security eternally top-ranking subjects, there’s an opportunity to introduce virtualisation within an IT security strategy to ensure green IT goes hand in hand with securing online communications and collaboration.

The fact is that online threats are never going to disappear, and the volume of collaborative communications conducted online is only going to increase. Both of these require solid security policy, a premium content filtering capability and an underlying technology environment to support them. Choosing a virtualised security environment not only delivers peace of mind that an organisation is secure, but it’s also a lower cost, lower consumption way of preparing for the inevitable increases in email, web and online traffic.

It’s important that in improving your server and security environment that you don’t just add boxes to what you have. Instead, look for advanced solutions that integrate functions and reduce the number of point products necessary. Through this, it’s possible to reduce licensing, hardware, support and training in one easy-to-use, easy-to-administer solution. In fact, VMWare estimates that customers can save an additional 50-75% on overall IT resources through virtualisation.

All in all, if IT departments can keep an organisation running efficiently, at less cost, with more manageability and collaboration based on a virtualised environment, then already ‘green IT’ is winning out, irrespective of the fallout of a downturn.

*Peter Croft is APAC Managing Director at Clearswift.