Virtualisation to Have Major Impact by 2010
The increasing importance of virtualisation in delivering both
cost effective and ‘green’ IT solutions for business of all sizes
has been highlighted by a recent set of predictions from the
research giant Gartner. They claim that the growing adoption of
virtualisation will mean that by 2012 over 20% of businesses will
not own any IT assets.
As organisations become more familiar with the concepts of
client virtualisation, many will begin to question whether they
actually need to own PCs if it doesn’t really matter on which
machines their users are working.
At the same time there is already a significant move among
infrastructure service providers to build server farms that allow
large organisations to move their IT infrastructures offsite or
even off their books.
The report goes on to say that while the need for computing
hardware will not disappear, the shift to hosted infrastructure
will lead to smaller IT budgets. This will, in turn, result in
hardware specialists being laid off or needing to retrain.
All of which means that we are likely to see an increasing
demand for a range of virtualisation-related training, with an
emphasis on key skills such as installing, configuring and managing
virtualisation solutions and keeping abreast of the latest
developments in this fast moving area.
It’s also likely to encompass related skills in the areas of
business continuity and security. Indeed Gartner, in a separate
report, have highlighted some security concerns associated with
virtualisation and have predicted that by 2012 around 60% of
virtualised servers will be less secure than the physical servers
they have replaced.
“Virtualisation is not inherently insecure,” said Neil
MacDonald, vice president and Gartner fellow. “However, most
virtualised workloads are being deployed insecurely. The latter is
a result of the immaturity of tools and processes, and the limited
training of staff, resellers and consultants.”
So, the requirement for high quality and wide ranging training
is likely to become an increasingly common feature of the
virtualisation landscape over the coming months and
years.