What Can You Do With Business Virtualization?
"Virtualization" has become a buzzword… and like most buzzwords, very few actually know what it means, like "think outside the box". While the word "virtualization" itself drums up Jetson-like images of the business world, the practical application is, well… just that - a little
To help you cut through the buzz around virtualization and understand the possibilities for your environment and network security, here’s 9 things you can do with small business virtualization.
Testing and Development
The only guarantee of testing and development in a live environment is that something will inevitably go wrong. A virtualized environment made up of mixed libraries and application isolations however empowers you to test and develop in an environment removed from any "oops" scenarios. Not only will it prevent the ‘oops’, it will also keep your network security strong.
Load Balancing
One of the more pervasive issues for small businesses - after network security - is balancing their server loads…. and work loads are never, ever balanced. By digitally allocating resources you can speed up one server by borrowing virtualized resources from another.
Disaster Recovery
Losing a single record due to network security or data breach issues could cost you hundreds if not thousands of dollars. Scale this up to hundreds or thousands of records and that’s a cost most small businesses can’t afford. The redundancy created by a virtualized environment empowers you to re-image lost information on one server to another - quickly.
Consolidation
Consolidating your servers saves hardware, electricity and can lead to excellent performance gains.
Energy Efficiency
Virtualized environments rely less on energy-hogging hardware, allowing you to be more energy efficient. This is not only ‘hip’ and ‘green’ but can save you a ton of the other kind of ‘green’.
Automation
Every tech department dreams of the automation that will save them valuable man-hours (and cut the drudgery of their day significantly), but execution is critical. Virtualizing an environment offers you ample opportunity to (finally) automate IT processes and workflows.
Mobile Support
Much of the virtualized server software (like Remote Desktop Protocol) allows mobile users to connect to your network in much the same way that desktops can. By setting up software that allows mobile users to access the same software that was previously reserved for desktop OS’s you can improve user access - without compromising network security standards.
Security
If your web-browsing environment is limited to virtual environments you can increase your network security significantly. If a virus, Trojan, hacker or other data breach occurs you can simply restart the virtual environment - erasing malicious attacks and malware.
Application Distribution
Pushing out software is a royal pain in the… server. It usurps both human and digital resources - both of which can be skipped by making virtual images to easily distribute.
Ready to go virtual? Of course, talking and reading about virtualization is the easy part… implementation is always the issue. If you don’t have the resources to rollout a virtual environment (even if it will save you resources in the future), contact our professionals here at Kelser today for a no-obligation, realistic chat about what it will entail and how we can help.
