Switching to a virtual environment is something that both individual users and businesses can greatly benefit from. Namely, the world in which we live is getting more and more virtual by the hour. There are some multi-million dollar businesses that don’t even own an office or have their staff meet, while individual users are quickly starting to show more and more interest in this concept, as well. With that in mind and without further ado, here are several reasons why virtualization is incredibly important and what are all the benefits that can come from learning how to exploit this concept.
1. Reducing spending
Computer hardware is a massive issue on the budget of most households. Same goes for businesses and, in most enterprises, about 40 percent of all their spending goes on hardware. After all, innovation in the field of hardware advances at an unprecedented pace, and being able to virtualize might significantly prolong the life span of your hardware. Other than this, if your current hardware setup is quite potent, it will significantly contribute to your power bill. A reduced energy cost also means that you’ll drastically lower your carbon footprint.
2. Easier backup and disaster recovery
Another thing you should bear in mind is the fact that virtualization and cloud services drastically affect your ability to make easier backups and recover from disasters. The truth is that a lot of businesses tend to ignore their virtual assets or take them for granted. As a safety measure, they install backup plugins and apps. Still, this can never measure up to a backup that comes from fully committing to a virtual environment. Other than this, you’ll also be able to recover all your data with a much smaller investment of manpower and resources.
3. Much simpler and safer
One of the most commonly asked questions on this topic is – why now? The answer to it is fairly simple, never before has it been cheaper, simpler and more reliable to fully virtualize. In the past, migrating to the cloud was more complex and there were some safety concerns that turned a lot of people away. Nowadays, all industry-relevant private cloud providers have a superior cloud infrastructure, which makes for superior virtualization. In other words, full virtualization can now be achieved with two devices instead of requiring dozens of them, all of which would have to serve a different function.
4. Cross-device continuity
The next thing worth keeping in mind is the fact that more and more people are relying on a plethora of devices in order to access all their data and use all of their functions. If you create a presence in a virtual environment and have all of your software, accounts and applications there, it will be irrelevant what kind of terminal you’re using to access it. What we mean by this is the fact that you can use some of the apps on your phone, your office computer and your desktop setup back home. For telecommuters, this is simply incredible, due to the fact that it allows them to fully exploit the concept of digital nomadism, while for enterprises it provides better business continuity.
5. More efficient IT operations
Coordinating between businesses, individuals on the same team or just individual users, trying to help each other out is a lot simpler in a virtualized environment. Look at it this way, installation and maintenance of software become a lot simpler this way. As a result, the recovery is quicker (something we’ve already discussed), there’s less downtime and outages are a lot less frequent in number. This alone would be a reason worth considering.
6. The disadvantages
There are some downsides to virtualization, as well. First of all, software licensing and upfront costs aren’t necessarily that inexpensive. Nonetheless, with the right provider on your side, you won’t be the one facing the bulk of these costs. Other than this, there might be a slight learning curve that’s not as beginner friendly, which is why you need to make sure that you find a provider that’s willing to offer great support, other than just give you a great deal on paper. In other words, these disadvantages are quite conditional and not necessarily that big of a problem.
Conclusion
Another thing you need to take into consideration is the fact that virtualization is the way of the future. More and more of the platforms you use are cloud-based and exist in the virtual world regardless of your hardware. This means that nowadays if you replace a device that you’re using, the difference that you’ll experience won’t be nearly as severe.