Although implementing a virtual environment would present many challenges, including legacy applications, data explosion, mobility, enterprise integration and power outages, with over 924 servers in 23 data centres, the move would vastly benefit Sun International as a whole.
This is according to the company's CIO, Thabo Ndlela, a speaker at ITWeb's Virtualisation and Cloud Computing Summit.
Added to this, the organisation also needed to address investment costs in its business case as well as the availability of virtualisation skills when moving from a physical to a virtual environment.
Virtualisation solutions may be similar, however, the business case and circumstances for moving to a virtual environment will always differ, he said.
“The return on investment on virtualisation is there if you do certain things,” Ndlela said. He added that there are two basics that cannot be ignored when moving to a virtual environment. The first is to forge a good relationship with the vendor the organisation will work with - in Sun International's case, this was Microsoft.
The second is server consolidation and even the centralisation of data centres, which Ndlela said assists in building the business case to move to a virtual environment.
Ndlela offered some pre- and post-virtualisation facts from Sun International's case study to show how the organisation benefited from a move to cloud computing. Pre-virtualisation, the organisation had 964 physical servers; it now has 364. Pre-virtualisation, the company had a one-month server provisioning; it now has a 30-minute server provisioning.
Ndlela stressed that benefits of virtualisation exist; the reality of the business case must be considered as well as the size of the investment required. He added that an infrastructure replacement plan must be in place before considering virtualisation and that organisations must upskill employees to ensure the availability of in-house virtualisation skills.
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