If you’re investigating the benefits of virtualization and considering how it will impact your business, you should pay particular attention to the role of IT in the virtualization process. It might seem obvious to say, but IT will be doing the majority of the heavy lifting during the rollout process, and it’s vital that your virtualization strategy ensures that your IT staff are properly prepared for the deployment.
Broadly speaking, there are four key roles that IT will perform throughout this process. Ensuring that they meet these challenges successfully will ensure that you reap all the benefits of your virtualization strategy and see a return on investment as quickly as possible.
- Documenting Your Current Network
One of the first tasks that IT will need to undertake, before any live virtual networks are rolled out, is a complete overview of your current server situation. This doesn’t just cover what hardware you have installed, but also the workload utilization as well.
This information is needed to ensure the new virtual networks can take over the existing workload smoothly, without leaving any areas of your business under-served.
- Training and Outreach
Because they will be the ones most familiar with your virtualization strategy, IT is also in a perfect position to be the “ambassadors” for this new technology to the rest of the company. They should put training materials together, as well as simply attempting to explain the process to interested coworkers.
If you get the staff interested and excited in the project, future deployments will go far more smoothly.
- The Actual Deployment
After doing planning with your strategists over the best deployment procedures, IT is of course going to be responsible for actually rolling out the new virtual network. They should prepare for this by setting up test systems and experimenting on those, to gain the experience needed to take the system “live.”
- Technical Support
Once the system is live, we recommend consolidating your IT staff into a centralized Center of Excellence that handles both network operations and tech support. With the experience gained from working with these virtual networks, they’ll be in the perfect position to provide floor support as well.
In short, the more smoothly IT embraces their new roles in your virtualization strategy, the more smoothly the changeover will go. Make certain your IT staff understands how vital they are in this process to reap the rewards of virtualization.