Managed IT Force Blog

When you virtualize a software solution, you are essentially storing it in an online environment where it can live. In other words, it remains in the cloud and is accessed through the Internet. This approach is helpful for many businesses, so why not flip this concept on its head and give hardware virtualization a shot? You might find that virtual workstations, for example, offer many benefits that can help your company be more productive and efficient.

Many companies have been in business for so long that they still utilize legacy applications for specific purposes within their computing infrastructure. There simply might not be a better option at the time, so they continue to rely on software that is, quite frankly, showing its age, including the server software that runs their business. Virtual machines offer these organizations the opportunity to still leverage these applications without the inherent risk that comes from using unsupported software.

Virtualization has opened up a lot of doors for businesses who want to make their operations more flexible, but your business can’t simply implement it all willy-nilly. You need to have specific requirements in mind for your cloud hardware. This week’s tip is dedicated to helping you make the best decisions possible regarding the adoption of virtualization for your business’ needs.

There are plenty of topics we reference frequently that may seem a little advanced or complicated at first but are actually pretty simple concepts. Take, for example, virtualization. For today’s tech term, we’ll take a clearer look at this method of computing.

Virtualization can change a lot for your business. Since you can use multiple types of solutions to expand the way your operations work, virtualization is the perfect strategy to improve your business. But what is virtualization, exactly?

For business owners looking to streamline operations and get the most out of their technology, a new survey by TSO Logic analyzed 10,000 customer physical servers and 25,000 virtual machines and concluded that 45 percent of existing VMs would run more efficiently in the cloud. A finding like this should be reason enough for companies to reevaluate their current IT setup.

As one would imagine when taking tens of thousands of servers into consideration, the reason for such shortcomings varies. In the study, it was found that one of the main obstacles holding back efficiency of on-premise virtual machines was them being over-provisioned, by as much as 26 percent of the inspected machines. In plain English, this means the virtual machines were set up to use more hardware resources than the server they were on could provide. In an interview with InformationWeek, TSO Logic’s CEO Aaron Rallo concludes, “Migrating them to the cloud and right-sizing them there would result in a 36 percent savings over their current operating cost.”

A 36 percent cost savings is a pretty outstanding figure. For many companies, savings like this would cover the expense of migrating to the cloud, and then some. In addition to using these newly found funds to migrate to the cloud, you can invest in upgrading older server units to the latest models in order to experience even further cost savings. InformationWeek reports, “A secondary finding was that merely upgrading systems to the latest generation of servers, whether on premises or in the cloud, would also result in considerable savings. Twenty-five percent of the physical servers surveyed were more than three years old, meaning they dated back into the Intel Nehalem chip era of 2013 and its predecessors.”

Granted, migrating to the cloud and replacing inefficient server units with newer models are two aggressive actions for an IT administrator to take, especially when one’s current IT setup seems to be meeting a company’s needs just fine. However, what this study shows is that taking such an aggressive stance toward making sure that your systems and equipment are upgraded, along with hosting data in the cloud when it’s advantageous, is worth the effort, and then some.

Would you like to squeeze out the most efficiency and savings from your IT infrastructure as possible? How do you go about this? The answer is easy, with help from Managed IT Force.

To get started, you’ll need a thorough IT assessment of your current operations. Managed IT Force can perform this task and report back to you on what improvements you can make in order to improve efficiency and save money. It’s an easy way to bolster your bottom line, and at the end of the day, shouldn’t that be what your company’s technology is all about?

To schedule your IT assessment, call us today at 724-473-3950.