Let’s face it, companies are less likely to make big IT spends with a tumultuous economy. Virtualization technology, because of its maturity and because it saves money, is a source of light in an otherwise murky enterprise IT sector. Leveraging advancements in virtualization made by SAP and its bourgeoning enterprise virtualization community is one way SAP customers can keep business process innovation on track during economic doldrums.
As defined by SAP, virtualization is the technique of managing IT systems and resources functionally, regardless of their physical layout or location. The technique creates a virtual version of, for instance, a server, storage device, network or operating system, dividing the resource into one or more execution environments. Devices, applications and users are able to interact with the virtual resource as if it were a real single logical resource.
Virtualization is not a new concept. Storage and networking have been virtualized, more or less, for some time now. However, as the tentacles of virtualization extend across numerous levels—network, CPU, server, storage and desktop—awareness and interest in virtualization has spiked.
According to Forrester Research, two-thirds of enterprises will adopt virtualization by 2009. Gartner predicts that virtualization will be the highest-impact trend changing infrastructure and operations through 2012. IDC forecasts that over 50 percent of physical servers will be virtualized by 2011, at which time virtualization services revenue will reach $11.7 billion.
Why such a rosy forecast for virtualization? Cost savings. Companies save money by running more applications on fewer servers. For some SAP customers, virtualization is helping reduce the cost of running hardware dedicated to SAP applications by as much as 70 percent.
Additional benefits of virtualization include higher application uptime and reliability, improved productivity, increased business flexibility and agility, strengthened security, easier, less costly upgrades, and let’s not forget a greener carbon footprint.
It is important to know that while virtualization buzz has recently peaked, SAP has been exploring how virtualization might help its customers lower cost of ownership and better manage their SAP landscapes for more than a decade.
SAP began research on the adaptive computing infrastructure at its global headquarters in Walldorf, Germany in early 2002. As far back as 2003, SAP touted the adaptive computing capabilities inherent in NetWeaver and began working with partners to enable SAP applications to run in virtualized environments.
It is the adaptive computing capability in NetWeaver that allows SAP customers to optimize resources and manage fluctuations in processing demand and hardware availability by allocating applications and data to servers and storage devices on a well calculated, closely monitored, as-needed basis. In short, NetWeaver adaptive computing capability is the linchpin for running SAP in virtual landscapes.
In 2006 SAP announced that adaptive computing capabilities in NetWeaver had been extended to companies running on the Microsoft platform, and in December of 2007 SAP announced support for VMware, a leader in virtualization solutions.
In February 2007, SAP established the Enterprise Services Community Advisory Group for Virtualization, which is known today as the SAP Virtualization Community and has as active participants numerous, well established technology companies such as AMD, Cisco, Citrix, EMC, HP, Intel, NetApp, Novell, Red Hat, Sun and VMware, among others.
The Enterprise Virtualization Community is tasked with taking virtualization beyond the server/datacenter level by developing new strategies for business process-driven virtualization that help companies cut costs while increasing efficiencies.
With about 80 percent of IT budget currently going toward the maintenance and overhead associated with keeping existing systems running, virtualization, at least at the server/datacenter level, is a must for all cost-conscious companies. Consolidation of IT infrastructure via virtualization is another relatively fast-and-easy way for a company to reduce these fixed costs.
By removing the dependencies between top-level business processes and lower-level
supporting technologies, virtualization, beyond its proven cost-reduction value, creates the potential for a near infinite array of business process innovations that drive efficiency and, ultimately, help a company improve profitability.
Today’s economic pressure may force some companies to put large, long-term IT plans on hold, but at the same time, the more aggressive of the lot will move on shorter-term, rapid return initiatives such as those enabled by virtualization.
