Virtualisation seems like the solution to managing IT systems, but what are its faults?
- Article 18 of 33
- SC Magazine, October 2009
In a complex security world, virtualisation seems to be a brilliant solution. But the VM path is strewn with pitfalls, says Rob Buckley
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Almost all types of virtualisation consolidate systems, reducing the number of points of failure. If disaster strikes – which may happen if virtualisation is being used in a disaster recovery strategy, for example – make sure you still have enough redundancy and a good strategy for redeployment of systems.
The statistics: how widespread is virtualisation?
Figures for adoption of virtualisation in the UK are hard to come by. Analyst firms don't record them, because of the difficulty in defining virtualisation and of getting organisations that think they have a commercial advantage to admit they use it.
Easiest to obtain are server virtualisation figures. Roy Illsley, a senior analyst at Ovum, suggests that 10-15 per cent of UK companies, predominantly in the finance sector, have virtualised servers operating in a live environment, 20-25 per cent in testbed and non-mission-critical live applications. However, he says, “If you do a survey at any event, 80 per cent of people say they're using virtualisation in some capacity”.
Ovum's figures tally with Gartner's, estimating virtualisation adoption at 12 per cent of x86 servers in 2008, growing to 19 per cent in 2009. According to Errol Rasit, senior analyst at Gartner, the main reason for UK adoption of server virtualisation is cost savings, but as virtualisation matures in larger companies, users tend to be more interested in agility of redeployment of resources. In mid-size firms, there are fewer implementations, but Microsoft's technology is the most likely to be implemented.
Regarding desktop virtualisation, Ovum suggests about one per cent of the global market has it, predicting that in five years' time 20-40 per cent of companies will be using it; but Illsley favours a more conservative 20-25 per cent. With Windows Terminal Services almost omnipresent, it's hard to know how many are actually using them. A recent Imprivata survey of US firms suggested adoption might be as high as 17 per cent.
For network virtualisation, there is difficulty in obtaining figures, since most professionals include VPNs in survey responses, invalidating them. Equally, 15-20 per cent of organisations could be using application virtualisation. Storage virtualisation is not being tracked by the analysts.
From PCs to people: how much can you virtualise?
Why stop at virtualising your hardware and software when you can virtualise your employees as well? The savings can be considerable: why send them all around the world to meetings and site inspections when you can send the virtual employees instead? You save on plane fares, accommodation, and reduce the company's carbon footprint, all in one go.
In 2006, IBM took the bold step of using virtual world Second Life for some of its meetings, something that companies such as Dell, Cisco, Xerox, Intel, Unilever and BT have also done. Second Life goes one step further than instant messaging's collaboration tools by allowing its users to create virtual versions of themselves that can interact, communicate and manipulate objects in a virtual environment. Since then, IBM has begun using the environment for conferences.
According to Karen Keeter, a marketing executive at IBM Research, IBM found that Second Life's recreation of the real world made it more easy to use as an alternative to meetings. “A lot of vendors are building virtual spaces where you all sit down and watch presentations. Why bother being there with an avatar? Why not just share the presentation? The value of [Second Life] is interactivity and concurrent content creation – you can have 20 people in a room at the same time, you can put sticky notes on a wall at the same time, and you can create lists of the most important ideas.”
This interactivity allows organisations such as Accenture to use Second Life for recruitment fairs – and even job interviews. The University of Texas and the Open University have both used it to create virtual campuses.
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