Liz

Since I started with vmware when vmware 2 was cool, my brain has found more and more excuses for using vmware. Its a little like any tool you love, you will find a way to need it wherever you can.

Real business reasons would include:

Ability to "trash" machine without IT rebuild costs
Ability to run multiple non co-existant software without a dedicated machine for each incarnation
Ability to run different operating systems or different patch levels
Ability to run "what ifs"
Ability to reset to known state without reimage time.
Reducing HW requirements and making better use of HW you already own (thus reducing power consumption, and cooling needs)

Practical examples:

The training department - I once worked at a company with 20-30 training machines, these machines were used for a course then IT would take 2-3 days to reimage them all for the next course (or even just reset to the course just run), as a result, they basically had to cycle 2 sets of PCs, IT spent most of the week reimaging them one way or another. The simple answer. VMware. Having virtual machines you could reset to snapshot, pre setup for each of the courses, as a result the training department took control of which courses needed to be setup, and could set the machines themselves following a small amount of training. Saving the IT department a lot of time in rebuilds, and a duplicate set of PCs. There was no vmware player at this point, but, even the cost of workstation per PC was still cheaper.

The development department - Same company really, but, they had a core product which - for best reasons known to them was hard coded per client, as a result they needed an environment that matched the client for each client, and they had a few. Prior to vmware they had a number of servers which werent hosted in server rooms (no UPSs, cooling and more scary no locked doors) which served as the relevant clients servers. The around 180 machines that constituted this setup were only used come release or issue, a few ESX installations meant that the relevant client setups could share hardware, be powered on and off if necessary, but, that as a small number of servers was needed now, these would all fit in the server room on UPS, and so on. Copies could be made if necessary to work on something and all it cost was duplicate software licenses, no additional hardware, power or flooring costs.

me! - One of the recent things Ive used workstation for, following the introduction of even more APIs was that a beta test I was on would release versions via FTP. Using a product called Automise, I setup a script which connected to the ftp server, looked if there was new file, if there was a new file, download it, reset the VM to my ready to install snapshot, copy the file over, install it using silent install, and then shutdown the vm, and mail me.. as a result, half the testing process was done even while I slept. Especially as the download and install process was often a 3 hour job.. it meant I got to do the fun bit, actually playing with the beta software.

Now, if only I could get those APIs converted for delphi..... (Im terrible at API conversions)