Defining virtualization

Earlier this year, CIO published a comprehensive article that looked at virtualization from several different angles. The article defines virtualization as a technology designed to provide a layer of abstraction between computer hardware systems and the software running on them. It discusses why CIOs should consider supporting virtualization: it'll save you money by reducing the numbers and types of servers that support your business applications. And how can it can benefit your business? Besides the money, it can enhance an organization's business agility. In terms of the different versions of virtualization, there's storage virtualization, which combines physical storage from multiple network storage devices so that they appear to be a single storage device; network virtualization, which combines computing resources in a network by splitting the available bandwidth into independent channels; and server virtualization, which hides the physical nature of server resources from the software that runs on it.

For all the details on virtualization:
- see the article in CIO