Virtualization Shifting the IT Mindset

I almost jumped out of my seat at a recent EMC Financial Summit when Dave Donatelli basically disregarded anything VMware is doing from a storage functionality perspective and continued to highlight the focus and importance of storage functionality remaining tightly coupled as part of the storage system and that is how EMC will continue to focus/ operate.

 We as an industry are also guilty of saying on a regular basis “…..just because there is a better way for IT to do something and a better technology exists, doesn’t mean they will do it” and I believe that it is a fair statement and often true. But, I also believe virtualization is changing that mindset and truly offering the opportunity for IT organizations to refresh and adopt a new way of doing things. Basically not applying the same old broken tools to a new computing platform. 

So, we spoke with a customer yesterday: • 1500 virtual machines • 100 physical servers • been at it for 5 years (yes…. a mature adopter) 
Unaided, when VMware and specifically vSphere was brought into the conversation he commented “We are excited to upgrade to vSphere for the capacity savings. We expect to see savings beginning at 20% reduction in physical capacity up to 20%- 40% with vSphere thin provisioning” He further noted that the capacity savings will help justify additional VM capacity and also make way for the company’s virtual desktop initiatives without having to purchase additional capacity. 

I can give other examples where IT is more likely to change existing process based on the features and functionality being built into the virtualization software. Backup/ recovery is another good one.

 My point being that there are examples of IT changing the way they have done things forever and it will impact the way they continue to license tools and purchase hardware.

 BTW – The customer was a well-known brand in the financial community and they back ended their 1500 VMs with an EMC Symmetrix 😉