Virtualization, a definition

Robert E. Boggs — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 02:49:27 +0000

Whether you are work in education, for a municipality or are in corporate america, virtualization is something you have heard about. There is a lot of information being produced by all the different players in the virtualization market. My goal is to demystify virtualization and the benefits it can bring to an organization. There are a lot of hyped up promises and tech-talk and I think virtualization is too important to the groups who can most benefit from it to wrap it in double-speak.

First off, we need to define the term virtualization so we all have common ground. It can be somewhat slippery as different groups use it to describe their particular set of services.

The best definition I have found is this, from this white paper on Virtualization in Education from IBM:

“Simply put, virtualization is a technique for hiding the physical characteristics of computing resources from the way in which other systems, applications or end users interact with those resources. As a practical matter, when you get a Google map on your cell phone or when you let your PC automatically shop for the lowest price, you are using virtualization. The concept of virtualization is very broad and can be applied to devices, servers, operating systems, applications and even networks.”

It’s the last sentence that makes it the versatile and somewhat confusing concept to understand. If it can be applied to so many different pieces and parts in the technology process how can it work for your particular organization?

Why Virtualization » networks

Virtualization, a definition