Virtualisation

Virtualisation is very much the word of the moment; however it is often used to refer to a wide variety of technologies. To many it simply means VMware, however a number of key software and hardware vendors are now focussing on this strategically important area of IT. On offer are products providing platform, server, application, desktop and network virtualisation.

In broad terms, virtualisation represents the abstraction of a technology into some form of centralised, controlled environment. This is accomplished in a number of ways, depending upon the technology being virtualised.

Consider that virtualisation in general is simply the separation of one system from another, one software application from another, one bit of information from another. A virtualised system is one that thinks it has hardware underneath, but what is actually down there is just more software. On the endpoint, this means separating the end-user experience, that which is most important to creating business value, from the underlying device.

This makes the primary goal of endpoint virtualisation increased end user productivity - regardless of equipment, connectivity or location - and since end users are really where the rubber meets the road, this enhanced productivity equals real cost savings. In addition, endpoint virtualisation provides IT departments with the ability to reduce maintenance costs through optimisation, simplification and automation. Therefore, modular endpoint virtualisation implementation can create significant savings very quickly, both in recovering lost user productivity and in hard IT costs.