ROI

VIRTERA Says It Gave Open Solutions A 165% ROI On Virtualization

October 16, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

VIRTERA, a services and consulting firm that specializes in maximizing virtualization Return on Investment (ROI), announced today that Open Solutions, a provider of integrated technologies for financial services providers, has realized a nine-month, 165 percent return on investment from virtualizing their global data center.

Open Solutions turned to VIRTERA, which specializes in ensuring enterprise organizations’ successful and rapid adoption of multi-vendor virtualization technologies, while optimizing the return on their IT investment. Ryan Marsee, Director of Corporate Networking for Open Solutions and his team leveraged VIRTERA’s unique professional services and consulting methodology, vSpectrum, to streamline the company’s virtualization deployment and to ensure their many vendor technologies worked seamlessly together.

As a result of VIRTERA’s experience and expertise, Open Solutions’ server compression was dramatically reduced to a 14:1 ratio (140 servers supported by 10 hosts) with server utilization plummeting by more than 50 percent from its prior 98 percent capacity.

In addition, VIRTERA also virtualized a portion of Open Solutions’ desktops. Currently, Open Solutions’ bandwidth-intensive, offshore development efforts require up to 12 hours for moving data from the company’s Cherry Hill, NJ and Glastonbury, CT data centers. With VIRTERA’s help, offshore developers can now tap into both U.S. locations and access on-demand data.

Microsoft Releases Integrated Virtualization ROI Tool

September 4, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Microsoft Corporation India Pvt. Ltd. today announced the availability of a set of tools designed to facilitate the adoption of virtualization technology for its customers and partners. As a part of this initiative, the company launched the (free) Microsoft Integrated Virtualization ROI Tool that is designed to help customers quantify the cost advantage from deploying Microsoft’s virtualization offerings versus competitive solutions. It also announced the availability of a solution accelerator – the Offline Virtual Machine Servicing Tool to help customers automate the process of updating virtual machines, thereby allowing them to manage the updation of a large numbers of offline virtual machines according to individual needs.

The Microsoft Integrated Virtualization ROI Tool gives customers direct access to a software solution that produces a detailed representation of the total cost advantage that Microsoft’s virtualization solutions deliver in comparison with other options in the market. This tool was developed independently by ex-Gartner TCO/ROI experts at Alinean, Inc. The tool allows partners and customers to examine current production server, development/QA lab, desktop and application virtualization opportunities – thereby enumerating the potential savings, service level, agility benefits and overall Return on Investment (ROI) from implementing Microsoft’s integrated virtualization solutions. The Virtualization ROI Tool collects specific information about current infrastructure costs and opportunities for improvement, then uses research by Alinean to project potential costs and benefits for various optimization strategies using the Microsoft Integrated Virtualization solutions. All research was collected from the Alinean ValueBase™ of IT spending metrics, and Microsoft product and pricing experts to reflect typical costs and savings for similar company type and size.

The Offline Virtual Machine Servicing Tool is built on Windows Workflow Foundation and the Windows PowerShell interface to manage the workflow of updating large numbers of offline virtual machines according to their individual needs. To do this, the tool works with Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2007 and with software update management systems (at present, either Microsoft Windows Server® Update Services 3.0 or Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007. The tool uses “servicing jobs” to manage the update operations based on lists of existing virtual machines stored in VMM. Using Windows Workflow Foundation technology, a servicing job runs snippets of PowerShell scripts to work with virtual machines.

What’s The ROI Of Virtualization?

April 16, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Cost reduction is always mentioned as one of the benefits of virtualization, but there are little case studies featuring actual numbers available to prove it. That’s why this post on Server Virtualization Blog by Eric Siebert was a refreshing read. Eric writes:

In today’s world the cost of just about everything has been on the rise. Fuel costs in particular have a ripple effect on just about everything we buy which also affects computers. That’s why virtualization is a great way to offset those increased costs. Providing power and cooling to a data center can be a very big expense, virtualizing servers can dramatically reduce this cost. PlateSpin provides a nice power savings calculator on their website. If we plug in the following numbers:

200 physical servers

average usage of 750 watts per server

average processor utilization of 10% before virtualization

target processor utilization of 60% after virtualization

The average power and cooling savings a year comes out to $219,000 with a consolidation ratio of 5:1 based on a cost per kilowatt hour of 10 cents. As the cost of power increases the savings become even greater, at 12 cents the cost savings become $262,800 per year and at 15 cents the cost savings become $328,500 per year.

Of course savings will vary based on a number of factors including how well utilized your physical servers are before virtualization, your consolidation ratio which can sometimes be as high as 15:1 and also your location. Different parts of the country average different costs per kilowatt hour, California and New York tend to be the highest at 12 – 15 cents per kilowatt hour where Idaho and Wyoming are the cheapest at about 5 cents per kilowatt hour. Power costs tend to rise a lot more then they go down so the argument for virtualization from a cost perspective becomes much easier when you factor in the potential savings.

Full post here.

Tool Tip: Virtualization ROI Calculation Tool

March 16, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

“The Microsoft Integrated Virtualization Business Value Analyst was developed independently by ex-Gartner TCO/ROI experts at leading ROI tool developer Alinean, Inc. This analysis tool helps customers examine current server, development/qa lab, desktop and application virtualization opportunities, quantifying the potential savings, service level and agility benefits, investment and ROI for implementing Microsoft Integrated Virtualization solutions.

The tool collects specific information about current infrastructure costs and opportunities for improvement, then uses research by Alinean to project potential costs and benefits for various optimization strategies using the Microsoft Integrated Virtualization solutions. All research was collected from actual Microsoft customers and reflects typical costs and savings for similar company type and size. All information is kept confidential and private.”

[Source: The Active Network]