What are the Benefits of Virtualization Technology for Businesses?

Technology plays a crucial role in helping organizations scale faster. So, most companies aim for maximum optimization in their I.T. infrastructure. In this scenario, can virtualization technology be a viable alternative to traditional computing? 

The concept of virtualization is not new — the technology got popular in the early 2000s, with the origin dating back to the 1960s. At that time, IBM’s vision was to increase the efficiency of computers through time-sharing.

Time-sharing, simply, is the sharing of computer resources. The resources from a single computer were divided into multiple virtual machines. For instance, you can split a single server into three separate servers, with each utilizing a third of the CPU, storage, and other resources. This process laid the groundwork for modern-day virtualization.

Today, virtualization is much more advanced in comparison. More companies are finding the benefits of switching to virtualization allow them to maximize output.

The Benefits of Virtualization

Lower Costs

One of the most immediate benefits of virtualization is cost reduction. If your organization can share resources, it’ll obviously need to purchase less physical hardware. For instance, if one server can host multiple servers or one desktop can run several different desktops, it’ll account for less up-front purchasing costs.

Moreover, there are indirect savings from virtualization technology as well. Less hardware on the network means less power consumption and less cooling costs. This also means less maintenance and physical management. All these account for great savings.

Minimal Downtime

Virtualized computing is easy to provision and deploy. You can simply clone a resource and use the replica. Cloning and replication take a few minutes — while a new physical setup could take valuable hours to complete.

Also, if any computer is damaged, infected, replaced or down for repair, you can build a new instance in its place. Virtualization helps quickly recover the contents from the backup solution.

Increased Productivity

Virtualization helps with replacing hardware, scrubbing malware and troubleshooting technical issues. You just need to clone and deploy your new resource without having to repair and recover first. This way, you save valuable time to spend on more business-critical projects.

The physical resources that the virtual machines live on do need maintenance. However, physical maintenance and management are a lot less. It mainly depends on how many different machines are hosted.

Better Data Center Management

When it comes to data management, redundancy and disaster recovery planning are big concerns. These can be addressed through virtualization. When you clone the data servers in your infrastructure, you create a ready-made backup. If your data center suffers from any issue, this backup can save it.

A virtualization recovery solution ensures the integrity of your data and limits downtime.

Virtualization also makes it simple for your data center to scale more storage and bandwidth. If you need to add more resources, you can easily insert a new virtual machine into your data center.

We’ve described how virtualization solves a variety of problems for businesses of different sizes — particularly, its ability to reduce I.T. related costs. If your organization wants to create a strategy and implementation plan to reap the benefits of virtualization, work with an experienced managed services provider that understands your business needs.

Connect with GRIP I.T. to optimize virtualization technology for your organization. Contact our team today!