While the cost of advanced storage solutions continues to decline, costs like
power and cooling, to say nothing about management complexity, can make life
more difficult and expensive for IT operations. The growing number of
sophisticated workloads can make it tempting to “throw more iron at the
problem,” but IT professionals are increasingly adopting the following
alternative approaches:


Server virtualization, which keeps physical server counts at manageable
levels even as the need for workload-specific servers is addressed


alt="Cloud Management" vspace=3 align=right
src="http://it-toolkits.com/images/CloudOutsourcingGuide.jpg"
longDesc="Security Manual Template - Sarbanes-Oxley">Cloud computing and
software as a service (SaaS), which provide access to advanced capabilities
delivered online rather than resident onsite


Server proliferation has not been a problem for small businesses, where the
average number of servers continues to be fewer than five. For midsize firms,
though, server counts move into the teens and beyond as firms grow. Unlike small
businesses, which have continued to add more servers over the past three years,
midsize firms have actually had a slight decrease in the average number of
servers they use. Virtualization is the answer, of course, with more
than
half of the midsize firms surveyed indicating that at least one of their
physical servers is virtualized. Server virtualization helps with power and
cooling costs, of course, but also facilitates effective management as well as
the opportunity to expand server resources without new hardware.


Cloud computing is also being deployed with increasing enthusiasm by midsize
firms, with roughly 18% of firms having some cloud resources in place and
another 18% planning to add cloud capabilities in the next 12 months. In theory,
this means that one-third of medium-sized businesses could be relying on cloud
computing in the next 12 months.

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