Originally published on thehearup.com
As the world continues to evolve into a virtual world, every business must learn the best ways to work with ever-changing technology. This includes virtualization. There are many different benefits to virtualization within businesses, many of which you may have never considered. From data protection, eco-friendly practices, IT duties, and more, virtualization might just be something to consider.
In this article, you will find Daniel Calugar’s five ways that your business can benefit from virtualization.
1. Reduce Costs
Virtualization can save your business money. It reduces the requirement for machines and specific hardware, which means less maintenance and less required purchasing of costly devices. Hardware and servers are expensive, and the costs that go into caring for them and maintaining them for use can add up.
Not only can it be a space saver, but all of the operational and care costs could also be dramatically reduced and improved by virtualization.
2. Improve Efficiency
Even small businesses struggle with storage space, and we’re not talking closets for your servers, although that could be an issue. We’re talking about the available RAM. Those loaded servers can become slow and inefficient, putting a strain on day-to-day business practices.
With virtualization, you can improve overall efficiency and even increase the utilization to run more smoothly for employees.
Think about it, when everyone is accessing a server, run time might be affected. You notice this in having to wait for things to load for more extended periods of time and other similar side effects. Virtualization might just help, meaning that efficiency is boosted in the end.
3. Disaster Recovery
Most businesses have a disaster recovery protocol, and those that don’t should. This is the procedure that your business would follow should an unexpected disaster wreak havoc in your area – you would have an astronomical amount of resources that you might not have access to, including customer files and information.
This is where a disaster recovery plan comes into play. Many businesses now have backup files and data in offsite storage of some sort. This could be “in the cloud” or through another means. Virtualization of this process would make it so much easier.
Not only would you not have to worry about offsite storage and access, but everything would be available virtually at your fingertips should the unthinkable occur.
4. Testing Simplified
Testing will be so much easier in a virtual environment. Virtual testing allows you to test systems and activities without actually changing anything. That virtual environment gives you room to play and test and work out most of the bugs in the process without harming anything that is live.
5. Make Backing up a Breeze
Finally, if you have procedures in place for backing up data, virtualization can simplify that process. Backing up servers and data will be so much faster and easier using virtual machines and virtual storage. You can do everything with the virtual aspects that you might be able to do with your traditional servers and then some.
Don’t let the idea of virtualization scare you. It can be a beneficial resource for every business, small and large.