How virtualization can improve business efficiency

Today, the idea of storing your funds in a bank is a no-brainer for anyone who wants to protect their assets with tighter security and higher return on investment. But have you thought about applying this logic to another very valuable asset – data?

The office is no longer limited to the physical workplace. With the proliferation of smartphones, laptops and tablets, people can work anytime and anywhere. This is a particularly major trend in Hong Kong which has one of the highest mobile penetration rates in the world at 62%.

Speaking of this increased mobility of the workforce and the convergence of home and work, IT management has concern about security. These mobile devices are potentially exposed to risk as they are subject to loss and theft.

While it is not uncommon to see lost mobile phones or laptops in public area, sensitive data and confidential information stored on these devices are subsequently lost with the hardware. Yet, there’s a simple solution which can help organizations protect their company data while balancing the flexibility and efficiency of workplace – virtualization.

According to a recent report from Forrester, successful organizations across Asia Pacific will radically transform end-user computing over the next several years. The focus of IT will expand beyond device control and security to providing more flexible access to data and resources that improve employee productivity and collaboration.

Virtualization not only helps simplify desktop provisioning and management for a streamlined workplace, but also provides an entry point to broader and more fundamental approach for dynamic business services. IT and business leaders must embrace cloud computing as their centralized data ‘bank’ for the elevation of their businesses and the first stage is to start by adopting virtualization technology.

Virtualization – step one to reducing costs and improving efficiency
Virtualization can play as a cornerstone to businesses. It optimizes the delivery of the organization’s IT resources, such as servers, storage, networks, applications, operating systems (OS) and data to users, by moving the resources to a centrally managed and secure data center.

IT department can manage and update the OS and applications at one time from one location, delivering desktops and applications that are customized to meet individual user requirement without the hassle of handling multiple desktops.

The IT environment can manage itself based on perceived activity and utility computing, in which computer processing power is seen as a utility that clients pay for consumption or provision only. Virtualization is hence the ideal foundation for enterprises to implement their own on-premise private cloud infrastructure. It serves as an individual ‘bank account’ for some or all of their data and computing resources.

Server virtualization is often seen as first step to the Cloud journey. Through server virtualization, businesses can move applications, OS and other services, which traditionally run on separate, physical machines, into a virtual environment.

As a second step, distributed virtualization allows sharing of distributed back-end resources between multiple clients, meaning features which enterprises would have previously accessed through separate places can now be centralized in one pool, by additional licensing options for the server virtualization layer.

Not only does this result in greater automation and reduced costs, but also making shift from IT capital expenditure to operational expenditure, and to dispense with ongoing operation and maintenance costs.

Virtual workplace yields real business results in most cost-effective way
By separating applications and computing power from individual machines, virtualization removes the heavy burden of hardware investment and unshackles devices from the computing layer.

Compared to a traditional workplace environment, virtual workplace can save more than 60% in energy costs and reduce an organization’s carbon footprint by 80%.

IT managers can make all installation and software updates centrally, at one time, resulting in additional significant savings in time and money. The total cost of ownership (TCO) when switching from traditional PCs to a virtual desktop infrastructure can result in savings of up to 35%, bringing with it a host of other benefits such as improved security and flexibility to users too, as policies such as Bring Your Own Device are no longer taboo.

After accumulating a significant amount of wealth, people turn to wealth management services for advice on financial planning and investment portfolios for a better return.

Similarly, by decoupling data and computing resources from end-user, enterprises can work with a suitable IT advisory panel to streamline their IT operations and see better returns. Looking ahead, taking this first step also enables them to continue planning their cloud journey and further realize the benefits of moving to Cloud.