Understanding the V-Word

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By Ajay Goel, Managing Director, India & SAARC, Symantec

Virtualization has been around for a long time and while issues such as storage and security may still be there, the multi-faceted advantages offered by virtualization are real and attainable even if you run a small business.  Today, SMBs no longer have the luxury of saving costs on IT infrastructure. As new technologies like cloud and virtualization emerge, SMBs are changing their approach to IT.

The benefits that virtualization offer, makes it an attractive option for SMBs all over the world.  Smaller businesses have realized virtualisation can optimize their business operations and reduce their operational hassles. With fewer servers to maintain the same number of business applications, virtualization also offers the potential to improve server scalability. As a cost effective technology virtualization is available as a viable option for businesses of all sizes and is not exclusive to large enterprises.  

Hosting the entire infrastructure using virtualization requires just a fraction of the original hardware equipment.  What this means for cash-strapped small and mid-sized business is that you could afford to buy a small number of servers to be housed at an alternative location. In the event of a disaster, these servers could then be relocated as necessary, and brought to action faster than the lead times offered by most IT vendors.

Virtualization makes more efficient use of computing resources and reduces energy and cooling costs. Small and mid-sized businesses can also cut their capital expenses as fewer physical servers are required. Also, a key server virtualization feature, called live migration helps preserve business continuity by eliminating the need for downtime. Live migration can facilitate server maintenance or hardware upgrading without you having to schedule any maintenance time separately. This helps to preserve business continuity by eliminating the need for downtime.

Yet, rising interest levels and increased understanding of the benefits haven’t resulted in full adoption of the technology and most organizations are in the early implementation stages.  The Symantec 2011 Small Business Virtualization Poll revealed that SMBs in the APJ region have so far preferred to virtualize applications such as web applications, database management-mail and calendar applications. While being important, these are not considered critical for operations. Security concerns prevent them from virtualizing business-critical applications such as accounting, ERP and CRM. This reveals the extent to which they are adopting this technology and their lack of confidence in virtualizing critical applications.

Adopting and maintaining virtualization in an organization’s IT infrastructure requires careful planning in order to maintain security while also improving efficiency. A comprehensive security plan specifically for a virtual environment will enable IT staff to get the most out of the technology, as well as make it simple to deploy tools as needed to address security threats.  
It is important to recognize that virtualisation adds another layer of complexity into the data center. Acquiring the right data management technologies simplifies the implementation process. Data backup is vital for data stored locally as well as virtualized information. Data deduplication in particular saves IT staff time as well as frees up server space.


While enjoying the benefits of virtualisation adoption, SMBs must know that it is equally important to respond appropriately to the challenges it presents. It is clear that virtualisation is arousing interest amongst the SMB users and any hesitation to fully commit to the technology has not reduced its relevance as a viable technology, which increases operational efficiency. For SMBs a few careful steps are all that is required to successfully adopt and implement virtualization.