An escape valve and coping mechanism for the IT industry: Virtualisation

Overview

Storage virtualisation has had a relatively long adolescence, but is now about to come of age. “Perfect storm” is a popular phrase these days, but in this case it’s entirely appropriate. Virtualisation is one of the few tools in the IT kit with a genuine ability to significantly impact the challenge of unabated demand (for data capacity, application growth, and of user expectations) tempered by limited supply (of the resources to deliver IT and the tools to manage it). Virtualisation is a logical tour-de-force that offers an escape valve and coping mechanism for the IT industry; what was a “nice-to-have” and a huge leap of faith five or ten years ago is now poised to rapidly become a “have-to-have” and a quick hop of necessity. There is no choice. Much as the experience and success of server virtualisation has transitioned from initially doing consolidation to it now being a software infrastructure for data center architectures, so storage—virtualised—has to be a part of that virtual IT infrastructure