Video: Virtualisation Benefits Exposed At IP Expo

Cutting hardware and saving energy pale beside the simple savings in admin time, say IT managers

Although virtualisation can cut the hardware budget by reducing the number of servers a company needs, the main benefits are actually reliability and substantial savings in support time and effort, according to a video released before the IP Expo event in London.

“The energy saving we achieved exceed 90 percent, which is quite staggering,” said Lionel Wilson, IS director of the Woodland Trust, one of two IT chiefs featured in the short video.

“We went [from 25 servers] to three, and in the summer holidays we can take them down to one.” said the other IT pro in the clip, Matt Sampson, IT  manager of Ely Community College.

Sampson chose VMware for his virtualisation project, while Wilson used Microsoft’s Hyper/V, but both agreed that the main benefits of the technology were higher reliability and time savings for IT staff.

The two-day IP Expo begins at London’s Earls Court 2 Exhibition Centre on October 20. The video clip is chaired by Adam Malik, content director from Imago Techmedia, organisers of the event.