What is Next in Virtualisation?

In this blog post, Tom Brand, virtualisation practice lead at GlassHouse Technologies (UK), discusses what is next in virtualisation now businesses have done their pilot tests... Are they now ready to make the leap of faith to virtualise their wider environments?

If one was to believe the statistics presented by some vendors, you'd be forgiven for thinking the vast majority of organisations are already running extensive levels of virtualisation across their production environments. In reality, however, many organisations have actually only virtualised the low hanging fruit or are still is the process of piloting their virtual infrastructures.  One of the first barriers to virtualisation roll-out is often a lack of understanding of the differences between a Proof of Concept (POC) and a Pilot.

A POC is typically a partial and often standalone solution used to establish that a concept or system satisfies some aspect of the requirements for the complete solution. The proof of concept implementation will not affect business operational data although it may integrate with existing business systems to some extent. In many environments pilots are actually more like POCs, but unfortunately the pressure to reduce cost and rapidly deliver new services has forced the POC infrastructure to become integrated with production bypassing the wider scope of planning that should be undertaken.

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The purpose of a pilot project is to test, usually in a production environment, whether the system is working as it was designed while limiting business exposure. The transition from running a pilot to virtualising the wider environment shouldn’t be a leap of faith because sufficient design, development and planning should have been undertaken, and here lies another barrier. The design and planning required for the pilot should in effect be treated exactly the same as deploying the production environment. When a successful pilot has been completed, more often than not, it will simply be rebadged as production and expand accordingly.