Virtualization from VMware helps drive down the cost of IT by consolidating servers, reducing maintenance costs and lowering management overhead. Just as importantly, VMware’s advanced features make it possible to achieve high availability for critical applications in the data center. With VMware’s high availability features, applications that support revenue generation and applications that support efficiency, cost containment and risk management are always available. It’s no surprise, then that InformationWeek.com, using data from a recent IDC study, highlighted virtualization as the top priority for CIO’s in 2012.
Employees, partners, and customers may access an organization’s applications from virtually anywhere: from the office, from home, or on the road. And they expect the applications to be available, regardless of where the applications run, whether from a centralized corporate data center, from a cloud service, from a branch office or from some combination of the three.
CIO’s and IT administrators responsible for branch office IT operations face unique challenges that have, until recently been barriers to delivering high availability. These barriers are:
- High hardware and software acquisition costs
- High maintenance costs
- The lack of onsite skilled IT staff
Shared storage is a key enabling technology for high availability and an absolute requirement for VMware’s advanced availability features. Shared storage has also, however, been a prime contributor to high acquisition costs, high maintenance costs, and the need for onsite, highly-skilled IT staff.
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