Recession is not a surprising economic situation today. It is rather a common occurrence. The World Economy has witnessed some of the most gruelling forms of this phenomenon recently. Whether it is the Americas or Europe or Asia, recession has caused far spread concern in the business world and especially for IT enterprises. Owing to recession, companies have limited budgets for their expenses and the need to cut down significantly on IT operational costs is a growing headache and concern for managers.
A majority of IT expenses go towards infrastructure requirements like large scale storage involving servers, data centers, etc. IT managers and senior officials are working out strategies to cut down on infrastructure usage in order to directly reduce their spending spree on such essential entities.
As more data and information are generated, there is a need to have more storage and data management space. Adding physical servers or blade servers would provide the necessary space, but they have the huge problem of mounting operational costs, power consumption etc. Another approach that was tried out by organisations was application consolidation but it was also abandoned owing to several deep issues that pop up frequently owing to this such as resource crunch, conflicts, version incompatibility of databases, etc. As such, the need for a much more streamlined and efficient way to cut down on IT expenditure was mooted.
The most promising implementation in IT infrastructure that serves this purpose is the evolution of virtual data centers. It is most evident from the live example of Kronos – one of the pioneer names in the field of global workforce management solutions. The company was faced with increasing pressure from all sides owing to spiralling costs in its IT infrastructure. After going through detailed studies, they settled for the strategy to opt for virtualized data centers. The results were outstanding as power consumption went down by over 20 per cent and Kronos was able to shelf off nearly $1.2 Million in expenses, which they would have had to incur had they opted for more servers.
All it needs is to implement a wise virtualization strategy is to have a clear understanding of the shared storage needs as well as necessary management skills to avoid virtualization sprawls which normally occurs when virtualization goes unchecked. The benefits of moving to a virtual data center are many and these combine to lure more enterprises to leverage the features and advantages of data center virtualization. Some of the important benefits that can be associated with moving to a virtual data center are:
- Offers enterprises whether big or small with a dynamic platform for their operations that facilitates smooth transit of live applications from one physical server to another which, indeed is due to the virtualized environment present.
- Increased availability of key business applications for smooth functioning of important business models even in the event of a hardware failure.
- Existing infrastructure can be spruced up for better resource handling as well as load management across servers to provide optimum output with minimal consumption of resources.
- Backup and disaster recovery is made easier with readily available backup storage and software tools and this also prevents business operations from being disrupted owing to data center downtime, etc.
- Scalability of the data center infrastructure is possible to high levels without having to compromise on efficiency or having to face mounting costs and integration with existing network and storage infrastructure is easy as well.
These characteristics are attributed to the technology’s high availability features that improve the operations of a business. GMO Cloud offers this type of feature as it delivers faster access and lower latency from any location worldwide.
Thus the strategy of moving to a virtual data center paves way for greater flexibility in administration as well as reduction of IT expenditure. It is a clear cut solution for IT organizations as well as business enterprises to streamline their operations with minimal economic burdens which is crucial at this time of recession.
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About the Guest Author:
Mandira Srivastava is a fulltime freelance writer who specializes in technology, health and fitness, politics, and financial writing. Equipped with degree of mass communication and having worked for both private and corporate clients, I have experience meeting a wide range of writing requirements and styles.
