SMBs to the Virtual World: 'Don’t Super-Size Me'

Same Challenges

From the largest enterprise all the way down to the small and mid-sized company, the IT challenges are the same: reduce capital and operating costs while maintaining or improving the level of services offered.  It comes as no surprise that there has been a virtual tsunami of server and storage virtualization in large data centers to consolidate hardware, simplify management and save dollars. After all, the promise of virtualization is a veritable golden ticket for IT departments:

• Reduce hardware TCO
• Increase asset utilization
• Minimize scheduled and unscheduled downtimes
• Meet stringent uptime and response metrics
• Ensure rapid and reliable disaster recovery
• Deploy new systems and respond to problems faster
• Protect data
• Improve efficiency

In the past, virtualization vendors were focused on large data centers, and many large companies have already jumped on the virtualization bandwagon, while the mantra of the SMB has been more along the lines of “someday”. So what needs to change for the SMB to embrace virtualization?

Different Scale

Solutions that require specialized IT resources, extensive training and expensive new equipment may be out of reach for the SMB. Familiar working environments and interfaces, more wizards and automated tools, shorter ROI and less out of pocket costs equals more time and money to do other things.

Microsoft Hyper-V, which is included at no cost in Windows Server 2008, is a hypervisor-based virtualization system that allows multiple operating systems to run at the same time on one physical server. According to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Server Virtualization Tracker, Microsoft now has about 25 percent of the virtualization market. This represents an increase of 3 points year over year. Its large installed base and familiar interface makes Hyper-V an excellent entry-level server virtualization solution for small and mid-sized businesses.

Hyper-V is also a platform that is enabling technology providers to develop and deploy SMB virtualization solutions. Microsoft’s virtualization strategy is a part of a much broader vision, where the hypervisor is a foundation for a larger cloud computing initiative as well as a platform for solution and deployment partners to provide technology solutions that complement and extend the Microsoft virtualization toolset. Microsoft has established the Virtualization Partner Program that provides development funds, SDK resources and in some cases sales assistance to solution providers and integrators.  This virtualization platform and partner program is enabling solutions that are “powered by Hyper-V” to help small and mid-sized businesses reap the benefits of virtualization.