From IT tool to business enabler

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From IT tool to business enabler

Sometimes virtualization is like a seesaw. As hardware costs are reduced, administrative costs rise. As workloads and compute resources become more efficient, the overarching infrastructure becomes more complex.

“Virtualization is wildly popular because it helps lower hardware costs, minimize power and cooling expenses and increase server utilization rates,” says David Gee, Vice President of Marketing for HP Software. “But there is a caveat. As IT teams seek to drive down the cost of computing by giving more flexibility to server, network and storage systems, they effectively add complexity and cost to the ways these systems are managed and automated.”

If organizations don’t get their arms around the administrative complexity that virtualization introduces, Gee adds, they’ll never be able to realize the cost savings, performance gains or efficiencies that it can deliver.

According to a recent IDC white paper sponsored by HP, “Virtualization is having a profoundly positive impact on the ability of IT organizations to respond to business demands; the agility that the infrastructure provides offers faster deployment of IT services. However, the management of both physical and virtual infrastructures is an important area of investment to ensure availability, problem identification and resolution, and an IT service perspective.” *

Like many IT innovations, virtualization brings its own specialized management and configuration tools. This explosion of disconnected management tools can create silos within silos.

“IDC believes that IT organizations must better prepare for and invest in management for the growing problem of VM sprawl that spans server, storage, desktop, and application environments,” the IDC white paper states. “As virtualization adoption continues to grow, IT executives must place a strategic emphasis on management to accelerate and extend the benefits of virtualization over the long term.”

HP offers a comprehensive portfolio of software solutions that ease virtualization complexity, says Bob Meyer, Business Technology Optimization (BTO) Solutions Manager for HP. But it would be a mistake to think of them as virtualization solutions only.

“To realize the full potential of virtualization technologies, organizations must overcome the lack of infrastructure visibility, incongruent tools and higher management costs they often introduce. And that means administering virtual and physical resources uniformly,” says Meyer. “HP software solutions monitor, manage and automate key management functions seamlessly across physical and virtual worlds, directly addressing the drawbacks of virtualization.”

This software falls under HP’s Business Technology Optimization (BTO) strategy and portfolio for enterprise management and automation. It includes solutions for Business Service Management (BSM), IT Service Management (ITSM), Business Service Automation (BSA) and Quality Management (QM). Together, the solutions enable IT to allocate spending and resources based on business priorities, automate key processes across IT strategy, applications and operations, and measure technology effectiveness and efficiency from a business perspective.

“BSM helps organizations monitor infrastructure systems and the health of business services; ITSM is for day-to­day systems and service management; BSA facilitates service automation and updates; and QM ensures service quality and performance,” explains Meyer. “What may sound like a jumble of acronyms is in reality an elegant solution that enables IT to transform virtualization from a tool into a business technology.”

HP also offers software to provide continuous monitoring, analysis and optimization of server systems specifically. HP Insight Dynamics—VSE (Virtual Server Environment) allows IT professionals to visualize, plan and change virtual and physical server resources in the same way. It combines the best of HP’s industry-leading infrastructure management portfolio— including HP Systems Insight Manager, HP Insight Control and HP Virtual Server Environment—into one integrated offering for HP ProLiant, BladeSystem and Integrity servers.

At the end of the day, organizations now have a way to fully realize the benefits of virtualization—without increasing the cost or complexity of infrastructure management.

* “Automating Datacenter Management: Consolidating Physical and Virtualized Infrastructures,” IDC white paper sponsored by HP, Doc # 211831, April 2008.

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