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Virtualisation is one of the technologies buzzing around the IT industry that has been touted as revolutionary towards the sector. However, many IT managers still aren’t too clear on what virtualisation is, how it works or why they should implement it within their departments.

Virtualisation is the abstraction of computer resources which has many forms; which is probably what makes it so confusing. These forms include platform virtualisation, application virtualisation and storage virtualisation to name just a few.

Virtualisation technology uses virtual machines – or VMs – which is a software implementation of a computer that executes programmes like real machines. What this means for platform virtualisation, for example, is that virtualisation separates the operating system from the underlying platform resources.

Why would you want to do this? It boils down to more effective usage of your resources and this will ultimately save you money while also affording you a greater flexibility of your computing resources. Effectively you are slicing your physical servers into separate virtual machines, which you can treat differently – for example, you can have both Microsoft Windows and Red Hat Linux on one machine.

This can be useful to some companies who previously may have had to have two servers – one for Windows and one for Linux – because they run different applications or software. However, they may not have been using either machine to full capacity and therefore they were wasting resources and money. Using virtualisation you can consolidate costs and capacity onto one machine.

In addition, virtualisation enables cost effective scaling. It is possible that you could have several virtual machines across a couple of computers and only pay for the virtual machines you are using at any one time. As your web or application traffic scales you can switch on more virtual machines to cope with demand, only paying for those switched on. The opposite is also true – if you find that you’ve gone through a busy period and demand is slowly dying down you can instantly turn off the virtual machines that are not needed saving valuable financial resources.

As well as the few practical uses touched on above, virtualisation has many practical uses. This technology and can be used by companies of all shapes and sizes, and can help them make the most of saving money by running servers at full capacity – an excellent advantage, particularly during the current recession.

Adam Singleton writes for a digital marketing agency. This article has been commissioned by a client of said agency. This article is not designed to promote, but should be considered professional content.