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With a virtualized environment, business is no longer constrained by IT's
inability to respond to growth or changing business conditions. Virtualization offers IT the flexibility and
fluidity to respond when holiday online shopping spikes network demand, or when
a hit song or video swamps the enterprise with download requests, or when the
success of an acquisition demands rapid integration of the target's ERP
applications.
Moreover, with a virtualization model in place, we can now
apply business policies to the flow of information traffic, automatically
performing operations that previously required manual intervention or proved
impossible altogether.
An excellent example of virtualization's ability to enforce
business policy is tiered storage or the bulk storage of "older" files. A simple policy - e.g., if a file has not
been modified in the last 90 days, move it to less expensive disk - can reduce
tier one storage by 50-80% and reduce backup costs even more. This policy is almost impossible to implement
manually, and traditional automated approaches have proven inefficient or ineffective. With virtualization of storage, however,
tiering becomes a reality.
The two forms of virtualization - internal and external - are
highly complimentary. In fact, optimized
server virtualization requires a decoupling of the physical server from the
physical storage through storage virtualization.
Of course, care must be taken in implementing any form of
virtualization. The first step in
virtualizing is to assess and analyze the underlying resources. This assessment may uncover long buried
issues - poor layouts, oversights in security or access control, older applications
too brittle to be virtualized and the like.
Therefore, the rule when implementing virtualization of any ilk is
measure twice, cut once.
Today, virtualization is reshaping IT priorities and models
while disrupting existing practices. The
concept of the data center itself is becoming virtualized, and one can see a
world in the not too distance future where people use whatever interface device
they prefer to access a phalanx of resources and services delivered by a
virtual network infrastructure with no physical boundaries or limitations. Such a virtual IT infrastructure would be
resilient to physical damage, instantly responsive to external changes, and
infinitely flexible to the needs of the business itself - eliminating friction
between IT and business structures, and enabling alignment of IT resources to
business objectives.
Related Links:
F5 , TheInfoPro
Kirby
Wadsworth is a skilled professional with over 25 years experience developing
and implementing breakthrough strategies for emerging and established companies. He has played a key role in several
significant data storage industry transformations.
Mr.
Wadsworth joined F5 through its acquisition of Acopia, where he served as
Senior Vice President of Marketing and Business Development. Prior to Acopia, he was pivotal in creating the
continuous data protection (CDP) market at Revivio, co-founded Storability, a
pioneer in managed storage services, and served as Vice President and General Manager
of Compaq's Network Storage Services Business Unit where he created the
Enterprise Storage Network Architecture (ENSA) and led the introduction of
multi-vendor storage networking.
Mr. Wadsworth
serves as an adjunct professor of marketing at Babson
College's F.W.
Olin Graduate
School of Business and the Sawyer
School of Business at Suffolk
University. He is a frequent speaker at industry conferences
and events, and a contributing author to numerous publications.
Mr. Wadsworth
graduated magna cum laude from Northeastern
University, and received an MBA with
highest honors from the J.L. Kellogg Graduate
School of Management at Northwestern University.
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