Should An SMB Consider Server Virtualization?

According to Techaisle, a global IT research firm focused on SMB, server virtualization penetration among the SMBs has increased from 41 to 54 percent in two years. Currently, this penetration stands at 88 percent among the midmarket businesses and there will be an additional 7 percent growth by 2016. However, server virtualization is still considered as a ‘new technology’. But, those who are already using it have realized its efficiency and capabilities and have even looked up at it as a game-changing technology. Florida, being one of the SMB technology hubs, has incorporated virtual IT solutions in Tampa, Miami and other places. Even if the cost of virtualization licenses is high, ignoring the benefits of this technology is hard.

When you compare the virtualization research of 2013 with that of 2015, you will find that SMBs mostly opt for off-premise virtualized servers. The rate of such adoption has increased to 45 percent in just two years, which clearly highlights that the remote management of infrastructure resource is gaining momentum.

As far as challenges of adoption are concerned, it 34 percent of SMBs state that high cost of virtualization licenses has been a major obstacle behind global implementation. Moreover, the projected saving is still not achieved because management of virtual servers is difficult.

Despite these challenges, one cannot deny the fact that server virtualization helps to migrate from physical servers. The smaller energy footprint for the entire data center helps to minimize the number of servers, networking gear and the server racks. So, SMBs can save a lot of money because they do not have to own a data center, and can rather use a co-location facility. One of the significant advantages of virtualization is the disaster recovery management. It has software to automate the failover during disaster.

This is a step for SMBs towards cloud computing because servers and its underlying hardware are all virtualized. So, by integrating these IT solutions in Tampa, Miami and in other parts of Florida, SMBs will experience further growth. And that must not be ignored!