Are you’re a small or medium-sized business looking to get the best value for your money for your investment in technology? You’ll certainly be aware that hardware is expensive and can make up a big part of your IT budget. Today there is a cost-effective alternative to pricey hardware purchases: virtualized environments. These computing environments are hosted either on-site or in the cloud. Both options can deliver substantial savings on your IT budget, so let’s take a closer look at what virtualization involves.
The Changing Face of Business Computing
Not so long ago there weren’t all that many business computing options. An expanding business would buy a server and dedicate it to a particular aspect of their operations. In this scenario, businesses have maximum control over their hardware, applications and data – and that’s a sensible option, especially when have staff in-house to keep them operating smoothly.
But this solution has one big problem: it’s very expensive.
Apart from the outlay for the equipment, you’re paying for more computing power than you need. Small or medium-sized businesses seldom use the full capacity of these servers and this underutilization is a waste of resources. With virtualized environments, your hardware can be more used more efficiently and cost-effectively.
How Virtualization Works
The conventional strategy is to use a dedicated server for each mission-critical application. With virtualization you can use one server to operate several virtual machines. This means that one server can do several times the work, without wasting your resources but with equivalent functionality.
The Benefits of Virtualization
Virtualization isn’t cheap to implement, but it’s a smart strategy for must businesses because of the money you’ll save on hardware down the line. As well as reducing your hardware expenditure, virtual environments are easy to access from almost any device so you don’t have to invest in multiple workstations and you can maximize use of remote workers. Along with reduced IT management, maintenance and utilities costs, a business can expect to spend 40-60% less on hardware.
Virtualization can give you more time to spend on your business so you waste less time on managing your infrastructure. New computing environments can be deployed in minute, and there are security benefits too. With virtualization it’s easy to ensure you have data backups and good data redundancy. With only one server to work on, instead of several, backing up is simpler and operations are more streamlined.
Cloud Computing for Your Business
You can take your business computing to the next level by hosting your own virtual environment in a larger virtual environment – the cloud. This is becoming an increasingly attractive option for businesses, as costs have come down and security has become stronger and stronger. If you go this route then in effect you will be paying host your servers in the cloud, which can be even more of an IT budget benefit than virtualizing your in-house servers. The negative is that you relinquish some of the control that you have over your hardware (but for some businesses this may not be a crucial issue).
The bottom line is that you could be wasting money if you’re not taking advantage of virtualization for your business computing. To find out more about how virtual environments can benefit your business, call the IT experts at Quikteks at (973) 882-4644.