Managed service as must-have for virtualization

I recently interviewed more than a dozen enterprise IT executives about their must-have tools for virtualization (view a slideshow of some of their choices). Beyond the actual tool choices, they had lots of interesting things to say about how they came to embrace virtualization and how they're managing the virtual infrastructure so far. I'll be sharing some of that insight over the next several blogs, starting here with the perspective of Syed Azhar, vice president of IT operations for Plug and Play Tech Center, a Silicon Valley-based community of more than 120 technology start-up companies. Plug and Play Tech Center "takes the plumbing out of the start-ups' hands so they can take care of their core competencies," Azhar describes. Virtualization, for its flexibility among other reasons, is a natural fit. Plug and Play can easily spin up virtual servers on demand for its clients, for example. Interestingly, when asked to select a choice virtualization tool, Azhar names a managed service, not software or an appliance. Plug and Play relies on NetMagic's Remote Infrastructure Management services to monitor and manage its infrastructure on a 24-hour basis. Plug and Play gets the comfort of knowing somebody is always watching over the virtual infrastructure and, in turn, can offer its start-up clients strong service-level agreements, Azhar says. "This is absolutely a business must-have – either we do this or we hire a bunch of people" -- which he says the company can't cost-justify at its current size. For more virtualization coverage, see our special New Data Center package, The virtual spectrum: how virtualization is coloring your world.