Lean, green money-saving machine

While we all shout about the green virtues of virtualisation, its real benefit is saving money, says Peter Stroud

Focus on virtualisation as green technology makes one think that it is manna from heaven for IT executives desperate to reduce power consumption and carbon emissions.

While the technology undoubtedly boasts strong green credentials, this detracts from the bottom line business benefits: making companies more nimble, more productive, and gaining competitive advantage while bringing down costs.

The concept of virtualisation is nothing new: it has been driving business efficiency for years. The first mainframe and mini-computing environments of the 1970s were virtualised structures, containing programmes operating on different areas of one system. Running additional programmes required extra memory and storage, and the test environment would run on a complete replica of the system. Essentially, not far from today’s virtualised environments.

In these early days of enterprise computing, environmental concern was associated with Greenpeace rather than IT. Today we are rightly seeing an increase in efforts to safeguard our planet, however, we should be more open about the reason behind the increase in buying virtualisation technologies – because it can save money.

The IT manager’s perennial struggle is maintaining systems that keep the business running while delivering changes that affect the ability to improve business. Often, 85 per cent of IT’s annual budget is allocated to general upkeep, with just 15 per cent remaining for implementation of new systems required to move with the market and gain competitive advantage.

Churchill Insurance’s decision to develop a more user-friendly web site is an example of competitive advantage: motivated by strategic not IT-related drivers, the new web site enhances customer experience and speeds up transactions, increasing profitability and market share. The IT department played a crucial role as implementer and facilitator in ensuring project completion while meeting the business o bjectives.

Getting a project off the ground is costly. Additional hardware, project management, infrastructure design and internal IT resources must be collated, with a proposal authorised by senior management – all requiring heavy man hours.

With a virtualised environment it is possible to smooth the process and costs of such a project with less hardware and project management time required, while the infrastructure is already virtualised requiring only minor adjustments. Also stronger business justification will meet swifter approval from senior management. Thus, the time and cost of starting a business-changing project is greatly and incrementally reduced.

After approval comes implementation. In a non-virtualised environment the infrastructure must be procured, installed and tested. This requires input from other parts of the business – a distraction from daily work. A virtualised environment allows fast adaptation to full use, ensuring strategic development is running and helping to increase revenues.

With a well-managed virtualised environment the dynamic of the IT department changes. The budget balance allows more to be spent on beneficial projects. IT becomes a business strategy, not just a cost centre used to keep systems running. This change has a positive impact on the staff. All good IT professionals find working on projects that affect the business far more fulfilling, and fulfilled staff means increased productivity and lower staff turnover.

The benefits of virtualisation are vital. Sharing the resources of a single computer across multiple environments frees firms from physical limitations. Alongside energy savings, companies experience high resource availability, improved disaster recovery, tighter security and efficient desktop management, as well as better use of hardware, leading to lower expenditure.

So while the green benefits of power, space and heat reduction are a beneficial by-product of a virtualised environment, they should not be the business drivers for investment. While the market remains focused on these issues, vendors and buyers alike are missing a trick in taking advantage of virtualisation as a technology to make companies more agile, efficient and competitive, while dramatically reducing spend.

Peter Stroud is managing director of Panacea-Services