Guest Column: Virtualization Selection Made Easy

By Panos Hawandjian, E2E Recovery

Finding a virtualization technology that addresses your technical requirements, business goals, and corporate governance might seem like a Herculean task — but not if you follow these simple guidelines.

Choosing a virtualization technology is no simple matter. For one, each organization has its own unique goals for moving to virtualization. Some want to consolidate their physical footprints and reduce costs. Others want to reduce complexity for server management. Still others seek to improve their disaster recovery processes. Complicating matters further, there are a wide range of virtualization technologies available, from platform virtualization to resource virtualization to platform virtualization.

Platform virtualization does not present any easy choice when it comes to selecting products. Many organizations struggle with the need to virtualize their applications or entire hardware and OS layers. Unfortunately, there is no direct answer when it comes to the selection process — it will vary based on how the organization is governed, how the technologies will be managed, and, more importantly, what the roadmaps are for each aspect of virtualization.

In many IT groups, application virtualization is often a competing approach to platform virtualization. Application virtualization provides an effective presentation layer to end users but can add complexity in managing how it is used and deployed. One of the benefits of this method is that it allows you to make applications more portable and available based on roles and requirements of end users.