In technology, we often seem seduced into chasing the latest shiny object. Cloud! Containers! Orchestration! IoT! Big Data!
These are all well and good and can not only deliver significant value but can enable new classes of applications and revenue streams over time. That said, it’s worthwhile for IT decision-makers to pause to think about practical ways to increase the value of existing investments while simultaneously planning for exciting future opportunities.
This series of posts will consider some of the ways that you can increase the value of your virtualization investment and, by so doing, directly address common pressing concerns and requirements. These specific concerns come up repeatedly in our discussions with IT leaders, both in one-on-one conversations and through focus groups and other research.
Some readers might be thinking that virtualization is yesterday’s news. But it continues to play a major role within just about every enterprise IT infrastructure whether measured by the number of applications it touches, the expense of supporting it, or the number of administrators needed to manage it. At the same time, it’s often not used efficiently. At Directions 2016, IDC Group Vice President for Enterprise Infrastructure, Al Gillen, noted that virtual machine (VM) density is stalling out at about 10 VMs per server and between 30 to 50 percent server utilization. This leaves ample room for improved efficiencies and financial value.
Modernizing virtualization can take a variety of forms. For our purposes here, I’m going to focus on three pragmatic areas of value. I’m going to deliberately avoid terms such as “private clouds” that can carry baggage not relevant to this discussions. This post will introduce the three areas. Subsequent posts will flesh them out further and touch on some of the Red Hat technologies and products that can address them.
Get things done faster
Internal activities, such as provisioning servers or interacting with third-party systems, take away from the time that your system administrators can spend on other, potentially higher value tasks. Furthermore, application developers and other IT customers may be stuck waiting for those tasks to be completed. Faster cycle times for internal activities can bring benefits across the entire organization.
These faster internal processes can, in turn, lead to what really matters: accelerating customer-facing activities. Whether responding more quickly to customer requests and improving customer satisfaction as a result, or bringing new products and services to market sooner, increased speed generally delivers direct business benefits.
Technologies that can help get things done faster include: self-service portals (which allow delegating tasks, under established policies, to users), automation (which improves both speed and repeatability), and third-party integrations (which reduce the amount of manual work required).
Save time and money internally
While speed (a.k.a. agility/flexibility/adaptability) is widely viewed as an important attribute of modern IT infrastructures, making efficient use of both physical and human resources is still a top-of-mind concern for almost every IT manager. It’s worth noting that even the Web-scale companies most associated with the newest technologies are also known for their extremely high physical densities and large numbers of servers handled by each system administrator.
Increasing the density of virtualization deployments is a straightforward way to allow more workloads to run on a given number of physical servers. Equally important are management tools and processes that shut down workloads which don’t need to be running or which optimize workload placement and other parameters.
Stay safer, in control, and follow the rules
“Security” is often the shorthand here. However, it’s usually not familiar aspects of system security like access controls or firewalls that are causing the concern. Rather, it’s data jurisdiction, auditability, regulatory compliance, and verifiable end-to-end encryption that top the list.
Real-time monitoring and enforcement of policies can not only address performance and reliability issues before the problems become serious but they can also detect and mitigate potential compliance issues. Automating in this way can reduce the amount of sysadmin work that is required. However, it’s also a way to document processes and reduce error-prone manual procedures. Human error is consistently cited as a major cause of security breaches and outages.
The impact of modernizing virtualization
While sometimes overlooked, improving the efficiency of existing virtualization infrastructures can unlock significant value. In upcoming posts in this series I will dig into each of the three value areas outlined above and explain how they relate to the value of your virtualization investment in more detail.
Learn more about making your infrastructure investments work for you with Red Hat
Sugli autori
Gordon Haff is a technology evangelist and has been at Red Hat for more than 10 years. Prior to Red Hat, as an IT industry analyst, Gordon wrote hundreds of research notes, was frequently quoted in publications such as The New York Times on a wide range of IT topics, and advised clients on product and marketing strategies.
Red Hat is the world’s leading provider of enterprise open source software solutions, using a community-powered approach to deliver reliable and high-performing Linux, hybrid cloud, container, and Kubernetes technologies.
Red Hat helps customers integrate new and existing IT applications, develop cloud-native applications, standardize on our industry-leading operating system, and automate, secure, and manage complex environments. Award-winning support, training, and consulting services make Red Hat a trusted adviser to the Fortune 500. As a strategic partner to cloud providers, system integrators, application vendors, customers, and open source communities, Red Hat can help organizations prepare for the digital future.
Altri risultati simili a questo
Ricerca per canale
Automazione
Novità sull'automazione IT di tecnologie, team e ambienti
Intelligenza artificiale
Aggiornamenti sulle piattaforme che consentono alle aziende di eseguire carichi di lavoro IA ovunque
Hybrid cloud open source
Scopri come affrontare il futuro in modo più agile grazie al cloud ibrido
Sicurezza
Le ultime novità sulle nostre soluzioni per ridurre i rischi nelle tecnologie e negli ambienti
Edge computing
Aggiornamenti sulle piattaforme che semplificano l'operatività edge
Infrastruttura
Le ultime novità sulla piattaforma Linux aziendale leader a livello mondiale
Applicazioni
Approfondimenti sulle nostre soluzioni alle sfide applicative più difficili
Serie originali
Raccontiamo le interessanti storie di leader e creatori di tecnologie pensate per le aziende
Prodotti
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux
- Red Hat OpenShift
- Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform
- Servizi cloud
- Scopri tutti i prodotti
Strumenti
- Formazione e certificazioni
- Il mio account
- Supporto clienti
- Risorse per sviluppatori
- Trova un partner
- Red Hat Ecosystem Catalog
- Calcola il valore delle soluzioni Red Hat
- Documentazione
Prova, acquista, vendi
Comunica
- Contatta l'ufficio vendite
- Contatta l'assistenza clienti
- Contatta un esperto della formazione
- Social media
Informazioni su Red Hat
Red Hat è leader mondiale nella fornitura di soluzioni open source per le aziende, tra cui Linux, Kubernetes, container e soluzioni cloud. Le nostre soluzioni open source, rese sicure per un uso aziendale, consentono di operare su più piattaforme e ambienti, dal datacenter centrale all'edge della rete.
Seleziona la tua lingua
Red Hat legal and privacy links
- Informazioni su Red Hat
- Opportunità di lavoro
- Eventi
- Sedi
- Contattaci
- Blog di Red Hat
- Red Hat come ambiente inclusivo
- Cool Stuff Store
- Red Hat Summit