Johannesburg, 14 Mar 2011
Despite the idiosyncrasies that are inherent across the spectrum of business, virtualisation has emerged as a universally suitable technology for achieving efficient IT systems.
That's according to Tim Schumann, Chief Executive: Technology Group at Business Connexion; through his involvement in a multitude of projects and clients, he says virtualisation is extraordinarily successful across a full spectrum of industries. On the back of that success, he also expects automated virtualisation to gather momentum as the next key development for the technology.
“There are few panaceas in IT,” notes Schumann. “But where virtualisation is concerned, most organisations today have deployed some form of this technology and seen most of the difficulties they face in their environments go away.”
Explaining the differences that are to be found from one company to the other - even within the same vertical market - Schumann says some organisations are very information-driven, while others are more process-driven. “If these differences are considered unique micro influences, then why has virtualisation been so successful at gaining traction with the full spectrum of industries in our market?” he asks.
The answer lies in a macro perspective. “There are common problems at this level, which affect every organisation, despite their on-the-ground differences. These issues include factors such as the global economy, the law and changing technology,” he says.
On the latter point, 'business as usual' has meant multiple organisations deployed similar technology on the basis that it was the best available at the time. “Simply put, this meant x86 servers with Windows operating systems. This approach proved to be expensive and inefficient, but there was no better way of doing it at the time,” Schumann explains.
Here lies the common root of what has become a major problem for many companies. “As these environments grew, the inefficiencies escalated exponentially, becoming unbearable. Most organisations therefore found themselves saddled with similar problems.”
These problems included low hardware utilisation, costly maintenance, limited physical space and excessive power consumption.
Enter virtualisation in 1998. “This is the much-needed pain pill to start addressing the IT headache,” Schumann confirms. “In the light of the commonality of the problems faced by businesses across the spectrum, virtualisation looks less like a panacea, and more like a specific solution to specific problems,” he adds.
That was over 12 years ago; virtualisation and the environments and contexts in which it is applied have advanced tremendously, but havn't stopped there. While reluctant to predict the future, a notoriously imperfect science, Schumann says there is plenty more to come.
“The virtual road to present is littered with the debris of companies that thought they could predict the next wave that the virtual market would bring. For example, virtual desktop technologies haven't gained traction despite sound technology and proven benefits. The point is that good technology does not mean that there is a good market.”
A better approach puts clients in the middle of the virtual space. “The best bet is to look at what organisations are asking for today and to look at what technology can offer in the near future. In this light, automation emerges as a key trend. With automation, mundane yet necessary tasks are handled better, allowing people to spend more time on strategic objectives.”
Automation in the virtualised environment can handle provisioning, updating, recovery and security, among other tasks. “These are all tasks that any IT manager will baulk at, despite immediately acknowledging their criticality,” Schumann states. “Automating them, therefore, relieves people of jobs they really prefer not to do.”
Virtualisation, he says, has already proven to be a significant cost saver. Add automation to that, and even more efficient, self-managing infrastructures promise to deliver more.
Schumann concludes: “These are just a few of our technology solutions that will continue to assist Business Connexion to not only maintain our market positioning, but to take us to the next level.”
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