Page 87 - How Cloud Computing Is Transforming Business and Why You Cant Afford to Be Left Behind

VIRTUALIZATION C HANGES EVERYTHING

cloud, it calls out to smart IT staffs to build (or buy) virtual
appliances and send them to it. The cloud makes moving part
of the data center workload outside the enterprise a practical
alternative.
As we have started to prize energy conservation, reduced
cooling needs, and less demand for floor space, IT staffs have

thought hard about how to consolidate servers, stack several
applications on each server, and split processing responsibili-
ties between their on-premises data center and the highly effi-
cient cloud.
At such an early stage, it’s hard to see how all the elements
will play out. But it’s clear that virtualization changes the ball
game in so many ways that new efficiencies are going to emerge,

whether the traditionalist data center manager likes it or not.
The vague and amorphous term “cloud” is going to quickly
evolve toward doing particular computing tasks extremely
well. Literally as this is being written, Microsoft is unveiling its
Azure cloud, where the task of developing software will shift
from being primarily an on-premises function to being an
in-the-cloud function, especially when the new software is in-
tended to be deployed there. The gains in efficiency are too
great to be ignored.

Microsoft, Oracle, Amazon, and many others will be ben-
eficiaries of the giant step represented by virtualization. But
they will always owe a debt to the breakthrough first staged by
Mendel Rosenblum and his entrepreneurial wife, Diane,
founders of VMware. If they’re honest about it, they’ll acknowl-
edge that they’re standing on the shoulders of giants.

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