Budget pressures and technology developments are likely to accelerate the adoption of virtualization, but some industry observers caution that tools and techniques for managing a growing volume of virtualized resources may not be keeping pace. For some good ideas on how to manage your virtual assets, eWeek's Cameron Sturdevant suggests you take a look at the work of your own developers.

Understanding "what's installed where and who's got access" will have a critical impact on IT operations as more resources are virtualized. In many large organizations it is the developers who are facing the early stage difficulties of creating, maintaining and storing virtual machines, not to mention dealing with their security, according to Sturdevant. These developers "are very likely home-spinning solutions to the thorny problem of keeping track of all these VMs," he writes.

Eventually virtualization is likely to play a greater role in enterprise IT, but before it does, it would be worthwhile to establish some guidelines for managing it.

For more:
- see Cameron Sturdevant's article at eWeek

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