It’s virtually impossible to walk the halls of IT these days without running into discussions about virtualization. Market research firm Gartner last year declared that “virtualization will be the highest-impact trend changing infrastructure and operations through 2012. Storage has already been virtualized, servers are leading the current wave, and PC virtualization is set to increase rapidly, the firm noted.

Key Benefits
As our Expert Point of View this week from Judith Tracy points out, two primary drivers behind virtualization are simplification and the drive to “Green IT.” Others look to virtualization as the key to running remote data centers that assure business continuity. For others it’s a simple matter of economics and consolidating resources. But the path to virtualization may not always be simple and less costly, according to some countervailing opinions.

Gotcha’s
Gartner Research VP Cameron Haight, who focuses on server virtualization recently noted the potential savings from hardware and energy efficiencies that can be derived from virtualization, but also pointed out that, “Few models exist to assess the impact of server virtualization on system administration costs for IT organizations.” The key point, he adds, “is not to assume blithely that there is only an upside to the operational impact of server virtualization.”

Virtualization Journal Editor-in-chief David Linthicum recently bemoaned that, “While there is a lot of information out there about what virtualization is, few understand the way to approach virtualization and the prevailing best practices.” Some even argue that virtualization can increase complexity rather than reducing it.

Fog Cutters
The point here is that, as with any transformative force, virtualization is going to be as good as the planning and the management you put behind it. One way to cut through the fog is to share information with your peers on what works and what doesn’t.