Our journey into the virtual world
The change caused by virtualization is much larger than the changes brought forward by previous technologies. In the past two or more decades, we transitioned from mainframes to the client/server-based model to the web-based model. These are commonly agreed upon as the main evolution in IT architecture. However, all of these are just technological changes. It changes the architecture, yes, but it does not change the operation in a fundamental way. Both the client-server and web shifts did not talk about the "journey". There was no journey to the client-server based model. However, with virtualization, we talk about the virtualization journey. It is a journey because the changes are massive and involve a lot of people.
Gartner correctly predicted the impact of virtualization in 2007 (http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/505040). More than 7 years later we are still in the midst of the journey. Proving how pervasive the change is, here is the following summary on the article from Gartner:
"Virtualization will be the most impactful trend in infrastructure and operations through 2010, changing:
- How you plan
- How, what and when you buy
- How and how quickly you deploy
- How you manage
- How you charge
- Technology, process, culture"
Notice how Gartner talks about change in culture. So, virtualization has a cultural impact too. In fact, I think if your virtualization journey is not fast enough, look at your organization's structure and culture. Have you broken the silos? Do you empower your people to take risk and do things that have never been done before? Are you willing to flatten the organization chart?
So why exactly is virtualization causing such a fundamental shift? To understand this, we need to go back to the very basics, which is what exactly virtualization is. It's pretty common that Chief Information Officers (CIOs) have a misconception about what this is.
Take a look at the following comments. Have you seen them in your organization?
- "VM is just Physical Machine virtualized. Even VMware said the Guest OS is not aware it's virtualized and it does not run differently."
- "It is still about monitoring CPU, RAM, Disk, Network. No difference."
- "It is a technology change. Our management process does not have to change."
- "All of these VMs must still feed into our main Enterprise IT Management system. This is how we have run our business for decades and it works."
If only life was that simple, we would all be 100 percent virtualized and have no headaches! Virtualization has been around for years, and yet most organizations have not mastered it.
