Virtualisation: Overview

Virtualisation is the fastest growing area of IT, and in essence, it looks to simplify customers IT infrastructure by removing the constraints that exist in the physical IT world, that drive complexity and prohibit agility. Historically, virtualisation has been used for ‘test and development’ in the server areas of the IT department, but as additional benefits have become apparent, it is now experiencing main stream adoption both in ‘production’ and particularly to the desktop as people seek to replicate the benefits they achieved in the datacentre, throughout their entire IT infrastructure. To give you some idea of the benefits available, most of the organisations we engage with in virtualisation are looking to achieve one or more of the following key, high-level benefits :-

Reduced Costs - Improved TCO (Up to 40% reductions achieved) - Greater Flexibility - Energy efficient computing - Increased Availability - Consolidation - Simplified Management - Improved Utilisation

This list is by no means exhaustive and the benefits associated with virtualisation are many and varied. As market innovators, Point to Point was extremely quick to understand the benefits that virtual technology could bring to our wider, customer environments. In fact we have specialised in virtual technology since the introduction of Citrix XenApp (formerly Presentation Server) to the UK in the mid ‘90’s. This was arguably the first Windows-based, virtual technology as it works to virtualise the user’s interface to the application. Point to Point’s virtual offering now extends to the following:

Servers – most companies are now aware of the benefits to be had in this area and at Point to Point we are fully conversant with the range of options now available and are able to help our customers understand which platform represents the best choice in their environment.

Desktops – Virtual Desktop Infrastructure is gaining a lot of press at the minute as technology companies look to develop their offerings in this area. At Point to Point we prefer to talk to our customers about Desktop Virtualisation as VDI is simply one way of virtualising the desktop and, depending on your environment and requirement, VDI, whilst compelling, may not always be the best fit or most cost-effective solution.

Applications – virtual technology is now able to address many of the issues associated with the physical installation of applications. Through virtualisation, applications can be turned into centralised, self sufficient files which will not conflict with one another and can be managed from a central perspective, thus simplifying the application lifecycle management process including testing, roll-outs, upgrades and version control.

Disk Images – solutions now exist to virtualise the physical disk of a device and allow our customers to simplify the management and delivery of disk images whilst improving control and standardisation.

Networks – networks have long been virtualised to allow us to take advantage of the public infrastructure that is the internet. Point to Point has excellent skills in this area and is now working with customers to deliver granular access-based VPN type solutions that are able to respond to the manner in which a user is trying to access (ie from where and with what) rather then just a user’s identity. Our specialisation in virtualisation even goes as far as two-factor authentication solutions, where we look to remove the reliance on physical token type hardware to act as the secondary component. Virtualisation is increasingly becoming a broad subject matter in IT and at Point to Point we excel in our understanding and application of this technology.

Find out more about Virtualisation products.