subject: Virtualization - The New Future? [print this page] Virtualization is the latest achievementin computer science. It should enable IT users to witness increasing levels of performance. Virtualization allows you torun different operating systems on one computer. Example of that would be one single computer running Windows and Linux operating system at the same time. So you can imagine that hardware parts of this machine are more efficientlyused and therefore more cost effective.
Today many companies offer virtualization services. You can buy a computer "in the cloud" and use it exactly how you would use your laptop or office computer.
Businesses are transforming at lightning speed moving their "papers" to data warehouses and storage centers. Moving data from papers to computers is cost effective more flexible and you don't need so many people to maintain it. These growing amounts of data need to be stored on servers and servers need system administrators. If youmove your data data to cloud you can remove servers, and therefore you dont need so many system administrators.
We live in a world where we try to produce less toxic gases. Virtualization provides lower electricity usage therefore impacts positively on the planet environment.
Another reason for virtualization is underutilized hardware which means that servers are running at 15 % of their processing capability. 85 % of processing capability is not used. With virtualization you use all of the computer resources so its is fully used. You can imagine all those servers in the server rooms consuming electricity, space, and they are only use 15 % or their power.
In the future we can expect that our computers will have operating system on the internet, which Google is already working on with its Google OS. Microsoft will follow otherwise they will fall behind.
You have Google Docs which is office on the web and all other great features of Google docs. For picture store you have Picassa in which you can store your memories so they don't get lost and you can also edit your pictures on the web. How fascinating is that?
