Virtual security is no less real

Virtualisation may not be an entirely new technology, but the current financial meltdown has re-emphasised its ability to reduce IT costs and maximise existing investments.  Organisations are tightening their belts, but this doesn't mean that business demands on technology come to a standstill. In fact, the pressure for technology to do less with more only increases during difficult times.

Virtual environments can lower the total cost of IT with the use of smaller data centres that result in less energy consumption and hardware waste. As such, analysts predict virtualisation to increase significantly in 2009. Yet many organisations fail to realise that without proper management and monitoring, they can easily find themselves in a position where critical applications perform poorly and affect business productivity. Cost efficiency shouldn't come at the expense of IT services' availability and performance.

In 2008, NetIQ surveyed 1000 enterprises worldwide on the topic of virtualisation, and was shocked to find that while three quarters of respondents were deploying virtual infrastructures, almost 80 per cent of these organisations had not considered any formal means of management. In the excitement of deploying a new technology, you'd be amazed how many IT professionals forget the importance of trivial matters like security management.