Interesting post by Joe Hernick on this, suggesting that the economic case for virtualization isn’t really there, but the operational flexibilities that it realises are more than worth it anyway.
I get where Joe is coming from, but what he is really suggesting is that the direct savings are sometimes less than anticipated. His example of 1 to one mappings of physical servers to virtual servers undoubtedly applies in some cases, but certainly not all. However, many environments have large groups of servers where high consolidation ratios can be achieved. And in any case, simplified operations saves money. Less real estate used in your data center saves money. Reduced power and cooling requirements saves money. Just because the business may not have a good way of counting these things doesn’t mean they aren’t real. But of course it DOES mean that they are difficult justifications to include in a business case.
In my view the business case contains multiple elements. Cost savings would still make up the basis for the case, but within that you point to direct and indirect savings, and make the business understand that the indirect savings may be huge.
The comment about blades being used in conjunction with virtualization is also interesting. I have a feeling that the figure is not only so high because of the nature of HPs customers, but also because of the nature of HP. They are really pushing their blade architecture right now…
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