Thoughts on Virtual Infrastructure Management

The X and Y ROI of Data Center Virtualization

By John Gavin

For my first blog I decided to tackle the common ROI topic so prevalent these days. There are various forms of ROI and TCO one gets from virtualization. The easier and first ROI to identify and quantify is what I call the “X” ROI which typically happens in that Stage 1, or server consolidation phase, of virtualization adoption. That ROI you get literally out of the box so to speak. It comes in Stage 1 of moving into a virtual IT infrastructure where you do the initial P to V projects and the focus here is server consolidation where getting a many to one consolidation savings is huge.

The second aspect or wave of getting a better ROI, thus what I call the “Y” ROI, is a lot trickier to get a handle on and is typically experienced in the Stage 2 and 3 phases of virtualization adoption. While the Hypervisor technologies out there have done a tremendous job of getting the underlying physical resources more productive, unleashing lots of untapped capability, there has been a major gap created in solutions that make the IT virtualization operations management job easier, especially when considering staffing is flat or down, physical and virtual resources co-exist and must be co-managed and everyone wants to develop a plan to get a private cloud someday, sooner rather than later.
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August 14, 2009 | Filed Under Virtual infrastructure management | Leave a Comment