Datasheet

Chapter 1
Proposing Virtualization
The fi rst phase of any project, whether you’re an internal consultant or an external consultant,
is to develop a proposal for that project so that you can gain executive commitment. The best
way to secure acceptance is to cater to both the technical requirements and the often overlooked
business case requirements.
The technical solution should be a business-focused solution and be understandable by both
technical and nontechnical staff. It should answer the typical questions. What does this project
mean for my company? What are the implications for my company? How can we successfully
move forward based on our current environment?
The results should be a vision for the project, executive consensus, and a defi ned set of clear
next steps. The proposal should model areas of business value and map technology against that
business value. Case studies, reference sites, white papers, and ROI analysis have a part to play
when developing both your business case and your technical case.
Interestingly, it appears that Hyper-V is being implemented not for the expected “virtualiza-
tion project” but as a component of some other solution required by the business.
In this chapter, you will learn what the elements are for both the technical case and the busi-
ness case when proposing virtualization.
The Business Case
Virtualization enables you to pool and share IT resources to better serve your business and
create a business-ready dynamic infrastructure. From a business perspective, the pooling
and sharing of IT resources allows IT supply to keep pace with the ever-changeable business
demand.
From a cost perspective, the pooling and sharing of resources helps you increase the utiliza-
tion of IT assets and thus reduce your total cost of ownership (TCO), in terms of both capital
expense (CAPEX) and operating expense (OPEX) costs. This is achieved in part by enabling
greater use of your physical resources.
Line-of-Business Application Continuity
Customers are turning to virtualization to enhance their existing business continuity strate-
gies (BCSs) and to provide a simplifi ed form of business continuity for existing x86 platforms as
they adopt virtualization. Hyper-V provides a robust, reliable, and secure platform that isolates
applications and operating systems from their underlying hardware, dramatically reducing the
complexity of implementing and testing business continuity service.
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