More organizations are realizing the benefits of using cloud storage services for their data. The embrace of cloud storage for data is so dramatic that in the most recent Cisco Global Cloud Index, it was predicted that by 2021, cloud data centers will process 94 percent of all workloads.
Although we’ve discussed the costs of legacy technology to a business in past blog posts, it’s often only truly apparent that it’s become a major challenge for the business when seen in its totality of incidents. By taking stock of the challenges that your business faces daily, weekly, and monthly in ways that have both short-term and long-term negative consequences, it becomes easier to make decisions about the right time to move to virtualization. In that vein, here are five signs it’s time to virtualize your legacy technology.
For years, virtualization has been a large part of many a successful disaster recovery and business continuity plan. However, recognizing how powerful virtualization can be for your disaster recovery efforts and implementing the right strategy are two different things entirely. While it may be clear that you need to include this in your plans, you still need to understand the best way to go about creating the right strategy to get your critical business resources back up and running should they be taken offline for any reason. Here are four key areas in which you should focus a good deal of your efforts in a virtualized environment:
Virtual networks and infrastructure differ in many ways from their physical counterparts. Increased flexibility, ease of provisioning and lower cost are some of the attributes that make virtualization a practical choice for many types of businesses. A virtual infrastructure requires a shift in thinking, though, especially when it comes to network security.
OpenStack boosts business agility, availability, and efficiency by providing a platform with on-demand, resource pooling, self-service, highly elastic, and measured services capabilities. If this sounds like cloud computing, that’s because it is. OpenStack is basically your key to building your own cloud infrastructure.
If you were to ask someone in IT why server virtualization should be a part of his or her overall strategy, odds are that cost savings would be the number-one reason given. When you look at case studies that show organizations averaging a 67 percent reduction in total cost of ownership after virtualization, then it’s easy to see why cost is the first thing that comes to mind when we talk about server virtualization. Yet there is more to server virtualization than just cost savings alone; in fact, there are some other things you may need to know about this technology in order to help garner more support for it in your organization.
Since its inception, virtualization has had a rather large impact on enterprise computing. Time and time again, this technology has shown it is capable of expanding a business’s computing capabilities and making IT operations more efficient and effective. The truth is, the benefits of virtualization can be found in almost any genre of computing: the server, the desktop, the data center, and even the network itself. However, there are some overarching themes when you look at virtualization as a whole. These benefits can be applied to practically any area of this technology.
As an entrepreneur, you are always on the lookout for ways to do things that can help streamline your business and quickly expand your infrastructure in order to meet your growth needs. Many businesses turn to a network solutions provider in order to assist them in this area, because this type of partner can provide guidance and expertise when it comes to virtualization and storage solutions—two technologies that have the potential to save a business a great deal of money if done right.
Rutter will be a gold sponsor at the 2015 Source Conference. This conference is a two and event on May 27th & 28th and will take place at the Courtyard Marriot in Boston, MA. The purpose of this conference is to bring the business and technical communities together to understand each other’s perspectives on the critical security problems that they face on a day to day basis.
