Regardless of size, most organizations are reaping the rewards, and addressing the challenges, of server virtualization.
Editor's Note: This article introduces the white paper "The Future—and Present—is Virtual" available for free from the MC White Paper Center.
Virtualization has received considerable coverage in the IT trade press over the past few years, but is virtual real for the majority of IT shops? The answer is clear: yes, it is. According to IDC, despite 2009 being a very tough year for the IT industry and the economy in general, the virtual machine software market grew by 1.4 percent to $1.8 billion that year. And a growing body of evidence shows that virtualization is being adopted by a large percentage of companies in all industries and in all but the smallest of organizations—and even in some of them as well.
The anticipated benefits—lower capital costs and reduced energy consumption—are also proving to be real. Furthermore, companies are finding that they can realize benefits beyond the obvious ones. As the technologies mature and organizations gain more experience and put virtualization to wider use, companies are achieving additional value. For example, many organizations have found that virtualization has contributed to IT efficiencies and has allowed them to bring projects to fruition more rapidly.
Nonetheless, at present, most servers do not run in virtualized environments. There are a variety of reasons for this, including a shortage of skills, a lack of system management tools that provide the functionality necessary to effectively manage and optimize virtualized environments, and the need to support legacy applications that run on platforms that can't be virtualized. Furthermore, even in those organizations that have overcome these challenges, most of them have not been at the virtualization game long enough to have virtualized their entire IT infrastructure.
In some areas, such as application performance, high availability, disaster recovery, and security, virtualization simultaneously presents both opportunities and challenges. Because virtualization is still a relatively young technology, some of these challenges and opportunities are only now being recognized and addressed.
To read the complete white paper "The Future—and Present—is Virtual," download it for free from the MC White Paper Center.
as/400, os/400, iseries, system i, i5/os, ibm i, power systems, 6.1, 7.1, V7, V6R1
More than ever, there is a demand for IT to deliver innovation. Your IBM i has been an essential part of your business operations for years. However, your organization may struggle to maintain the current system and implement new projects. The thousands of customers we've worked with and surveyed state that expectations regarding the digital footprint and vision of the company are not aligned with the current IT environment.
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Forms of ransomware has been around for over 30 years, and with more and more organizations suffering attacks each year, it continues to endure. What has made ransomware such a durable threat and what is the best way to combat it? In order to prevent ransomware, organizations must first understand how it works.
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Business users want new applications now. Market and regulatory pressures require faster application updates and delivery into production. Your IBM i developers may be approaching retirement, and you see no sure way to fill their positions with experienced developers. In addition, you may be caught between maintaining your existing applications and the uncertainty of moving to something new.
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