3 Things You Need to Know about Using Virtualization to Support Your Business

Editor's Note: Take a look at our featured best practice, IT Strategy (30-slide PowerPoint presentation). The key drivers of Information Technology (IT) or Management Information Systems (MIS) value are an organization's IT mindset and its ability to execute. Today’s best practices show that IT value can be maximized when enterprise IT investments are aligned with business goals and IT execution is [read more]

* * * *

Businesses nowadays are relying on cloud technology for a number of purposes. Cloud services can be used as the foundation of front-end services, offering customers a smooth user experience through apps and web interfaces. More importantly, small businesses can also run applications to support team members, providing them with universal access to critical resources anytime, anywhere and from any device.

Virtualization is one of the approaches you can take if you want to bring your small business to the cloud and VMware is the leading solution to use. Despite the popularity of this approach, there are still misconceptions surrounding the use of VMware. That is why we’re going to discuss the three things you need to know about using VMware to support your business.

It’s Budget-Friendly

Many small businesses opt for Microsoft Hyper-V because it is offered for free. While Hyper-V offers a set of virtualization features that are useful for businesses, it may not be the most cost-effective solution. As the business grows and you need access to advanced features, your options can get very limited, very quickly.

VMware, on the other hand, offers a nice balance between scalability and affordability. The investments you make when you first started using virtualization will be well worth it. There are ways to lower the initial investment needed to integrate VMware into the business’s workflow, too.

Investing in VMUG membership, for instance, still allows you to save more in the long run. You can also focus on getting the most Return on Investment (ROI) rather than to save as much money as possible at the beginning. There are a lot of workarounds and tools that will help stretch your budget as well.

Go with Private Clouds

Virtualization and private clouds are perfect for small and medium businesses. It is the perfect combination for maximum scalability. What private cloud services do is convert the costly SMB infrastructure – including the long-term need for maintenance and updates – into smaller chunks of monthly service charges.

Furthermore, private clouds can help lower the cost of using VMware vSphere even further with the help of OpenStack. There is no need to go with only one solution, OpenStack or VMware, because service providers such as Platform9 have perfected their platforms and allow 100% interoperability for VMware vSphere on OpenStack-based cloud services.

Backup and Security

Virtualization and the use of private clouds, despite the immense benefits, have one minor drawback: the combination tends to make businesses forget about the importance of having a backup routine. Now that cloud services are so reliable, businesses tend to rely on the multiple redundancies more than a dedicated backup routine.

There is nothing wrong with letting the cloud ecosystem handles your backups for you, but it is much better to set up a backup routine that will further protect your virtualization. In the event of a catastrophic failure, you still have multiple backups in remote locations protecting the smooth operations of your business.

So, are you ready to use virtualization to support your business? Now that you know these three important things about VMware and virtualization in general, you can deploy the perfect solution to meet the needs of your business and start enjoying the benefits of virtualization in the cloud.

Do You Want to Implement Business Best Practices?

You can download in-depth presentations on MIS and 100s of management topics from the FlevyPro Library. FlevyPro is trusted and utilized by 1000s of management consultants and corporate executives.

For even more best practices available on Flevy, have a look at our top 100 lists:

• Top 100 in Strategy & Transformation
• Top 100 in Digital Transformation
• Top 100 in Operational Excellence
• Top 100 in Organization & Change
• Top 100 Management Consulting Frameworks

These best practices are of the same as those leveraged by top-tier management consulting firms, like McKinsey, BCG, Bain, and Accenture. Improve the growth and efficiency of your organization by utilizing these best practice frameworks, templates, and tools. Most were developed by seasoned executives and consultants with over 20+ years of experience.