How To Use Cloud Computing and Virtualization to Create Virtual Data Centers

How To Use Cloud Computing and Virtualization to Create Virtual Data Centers

Recent research has shown as much as 85% to 90% of internal IT organizations are moving or have already moved to a service-centric model for delivering IT value. Rather than focusing on infrastructure components like servers and storage, IT organizations today are concentrating on end-to-end services including email and order management.

With increasing adoption of virtualized data centers, IT organizations have a greater need than ever to hide the complexities of the infrastructure and deliver a simplified user experience. Similarly, cloud computing environments are all about delivering value through services and hiding the underlying complexities.

Many IT organizations have inadequate governance processes to control the provisioning of virtual servers, resulting in problems including virtual server sprawl. Some IT organizations are building private or internal cloud environments to capture the benefits of cloud computing, yet they lack management tools to provide visibility into usage and costs. Successful IT service management, including the use of a Service Catalog, is critical to realizing the benefits of virtualization.

Virtualized IT environments provide a wide range of benefits beyond cost reduction and reduced energy demands. Based on survey responses from nearly 250 IT organizations using virtualization technologies, the following additional drivers for adoption have been noted (with % of respondents indicated):

Consolidating server environments and improving hardware utilization (69%)
Increasing service quality and performance, such as reducing downtime (62%)
Enabling disaster recovery and business continuity (60%)
Increasing flexibility and agility (59%)
Achieving SLAs (44%)


I am picking these statistics out of a really succinct and insightful white paper just published by Boulder, Colorado-based Enterprise Management Associates.

In the white paper, attention is drawn to a recently released solution from newScale Inc., well known as a leader in IT Service Catalog and Service Portfolio Management software solutions.

Released in February 2009, the new solution that accelerates the adoption of data center virtualization and cloud computing while ensuring governance and reducing virtual server sprawl. It's called The newScale FrontOffice Suite for the Virtual Data Center.

The white paper explains how the newScale solution provides an actionable Service Catalog of all services whether they are running in physical, virtual, cloud or mixed environments, and judging by those survey results, that's just what the doctor ordered for IT organizations currently using virtualization technologies. Take a look for yourself, it makes intriguing reading, especially for those who already realize and expect adoption of external cloud services to continue to skyrocket.