Alessandro at virtualization.info notes that he’s seeing a lot of "cautionary tales" about virtualization following this year’s VMworld, despite the crowds and energy of IT managers with budget at VMworld. My perception is that these kinds of articles have been on the rise for the last six months or so, and are simply
- a reflection of greater interest and widespread adoption in virtualization — the bell curve means that some folks are going in unprepared, so with more column-inches devoted to virtualization there are certain to be more stories of projects gone off the rails, which for the journalist are a nice change of pace to writing the 1000th "100% ROI in 5 months" story; and that
- virtualization is complex, being infrastructure that works with your whole data center and forms the foundation for the next generation of IT. It’s deep stuff — even if you can dip your toes in with an 86-page book and skip the weighty tomes, the essentials are still pretty deep. There’s a reason that there were over 200 vendors at VMworld selling you tools to help with deployment and management, a vast network of professional services and training from VMware and its partners, and the best online community and forums I’ve ever seen — this is deep stuff. (Have you asked for a raise yet?)
Still, though, we have more happy customers than anyone else — too many to even write about. That’s the best part about working at VMware. It seems like we’re in for an economic stormy ride, but real-world evidence around virtualization ROI, TCO, and agility resonate even more strongly when times are tight.
What are you seeing in your workplace? Do tough times call for more virtualization?
