Cameron HaightI have spent my entire professional life in the information technology industry. My wife can attest to my fondness for all things IT-related with her always having to gently remind me that the latest purchase from Amazon.com should not have a permanent place on the coffee table in our den (warning, geek alert: I am reading a book entitled: Virtual Machines: Versatile Platforms For Systems and Processes. It covers a wide range of virtualization technology implementations, and while published "way back" in 2005, is still very relevant). My interest in the book stems from my continuing quest to see if my coverage area, i.e., management technology, will be able to keep pace with the continuing change occurring within the IT infrastructure (with virtualization technology ala the likes of VMware’s ESX platform being one of the latest challenges). At another time I’d like to take on that issue. Great then, and the point of the posting, Cameron?
Well, my professional background is all IT, but my degreed background is all business-related (Economics, MBA). And while as an analyst I do work with our clients to evaluate proposed solutions for not only their technical feasibility but also their economic impact, the latter area is going to obviously get much more review as a consequence of continuing market volatility. While leads me to virtualization, or more specifically, server virtualization technology. I get the CAPEX impact which is usually reflected in lower hardware (capital) costs, but what about OPEX? The latter is often more difficult to quantify as a large component of this is reflected in salaries and wages (note: for this discussion, I’m not looking at power and cooling, etc.). I do know of clients that have seen (sometimes dramatic) improvements in SA (system administrator) to server ratios after migrating to a virtual infrastructure, but often there are other elements associated with this (such as having standard builds, "simple" or web server-style applications, high levels of automation, test/dev versus production, etc.). Also, while virtualization makes some operational tasks much easier (i.e., server provisioning), others often become less easy to perform such as root cause analysis. Virtualization (virtual server) sprawl or proliferation is also having an operational impact. So, is there a definitive way to perhaps account for the aggregate impact of virtualization across the range of standard operating procedures? Can we come up with our own General Theory or Monetary "History" of virtualization economics that includes a deeper look at the operational viewpoint? Let me know what you think!
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