Organisations can gain a number of benefits by implementing a Virtualisation environment but these will depend on the requirements, the situation and the type of organisation.
- Potentially lower hardware costs because resources such as servers can be centralise and shared and utilised amongst many users. This means that potentially, the need for more hardware is reduced as it consolidates and potentially reduces the number of servers that are required.
- Lower maintenance costs – if fewer servers are required, then there will be a positive impact on maintenance costs.
- It is perceived as a ‘Green’ solution as it will reduce an organisations’ carbon footprint. This is because if fewer resources are required, then less energy will be needed.
- Reduced storage requirements. Rather than purchasing more storage, it is possible to maximise and use a number of computers’ storage facilities that are underutilised.
- Centralised back-ups. Desktop virtualisation can negate the need to take back-ups when a computer server is off-line i.e. when people can not access it. Naturally this is inconvenient but extremely important so generally this has to be carried out at night or at week ends.
- As a result of the above, IT personnel will not need to work anti-social hours and perhaps be paid an element of over time.
- Disaster Recovery. In the event of a server failing or perhaps there being a catastrophe such as a flood or explosion, many organisations have contingency plan whereby they pay for a limited amount of office space from a disaster recovery company. This organisation the computer equipment required that the organisation needs in order for them to continue operating. Clearly for this to work effectively, a copy of all of the company’s data and information must be kept and loaded onto the disaster recovery company’s computers. The trouble with this is that more often than not, the information is perhaps a week or more old. Virtualisation allows the information, such as emails, to be replicated in real-time onto the disaster recover organisations’ systems ensuring that all information will be up to date.
- Reduced space. Organisations that have many servers and storage (normally within a dedicated room), can reduce the need for such expensive facilities.
- Greater (centralised) Control. Using a desktop virtualised environment means that control resides where the physical servers are located. This means that it becomes more difficult for users to add new programmes and applications to ‘their’ own system which might cause conflicts or issues within differing types and levels of applications.
- Likewise, this applies to most technology resources in a desktop or virtual environment. Upgrades are simple, support becomes far more manageable and the overall control of systems even from a compliance perspective is made that much easier.
- Security. Many viruses and other issues are caused by downloading spurious applications and links and unless a PC is scanned for viruses at least once a week, these can wreak havoc. Considering a virtual desktop environment can minimise this occurrences and risks while ensuring that data is scanned centrally on a regular basis.