If carried out correctly, the virtualization of a company's IT landscape will provide a number of benefits such as reduced power and cooling costs and easier administration. After major corporations have already gained experience in the field of virtualization, in current times an increasing number of small and medium-sized companies approach virtualization projects particularly willing.

The establishment of an overall strategy should be the starting point of such a project for the gradual virtualization of all IT components. Furthermore, before the virtualization process, an economic efficiency calculation should be created to identify the potential savings. The holistic view necessary for the calculation is best obtained by an independent expert since the IT departments of medium-sized companies are rarely in a position to provide those findings. Even though cost reduction is the most important factor for many small and medium-sized companies, the other advantages of virtualization should not be neglected. Ideally, with the implementation of a virtualization project, the IT landscape of the company should be consolidated. These projects typically start with the servers and those components that are close to the servers. Once the virtual infrastructure is established, the desktops can be virtualized. This step, however, includes new challenges and requires solid know-how in the field of virtualization.

The new generation of vertically integrated systems is of special importance for the virtualization projects of small and medium-sized companies. They are predefined and pre-integrated and can be taken into operation within a short time period and with little effort. They furthermore offer a central and unified provision of virtual environments and connect the different IT components from the hardware to the applications. These systems are the ideal solution for medium-sized companies because there is no seperation of server, storage and network and the systems can thus be introduced more easily. 

The author Ronny Zimmermann works at the SAP UCC Magdeburg and acts as a spokesman for the „Arbeitsgruppe Virtualisierung und Cloud Computing“ of the German-speaking SAP user group DSAG.

The original article was published in the DSAG blaupause, the magazine of the DSAG, and was sized upon by several online media.

Article on virtualization at datacenter-insider:
http://www.datacenter-insider.de/private-cloud/virtualisierung/articles/461631

Article on Virtualization at IT Mittelstand:
http://www.itmittelstand.de/home/a/viele-wege-zur-virtualisierung.html