Where next for Virtualisation?

United Kingdom, May 13, 2022

By Mark Benson, CTO, Logicalis UKI

In its broadest sense, virtualisation can be seen as the progressive freeing up of any computing function – compute, storage, network – from the constraints of its physical infrastructure. So far, virtualisation has been a continuous evolution, from the first virtual machines (VMs) to the world of hybrid cloud, and there is no sign yet of this evolution losing momentum.  

This blog looks at this evolution, considering how virtualisation has got to where it is, and the drivers and developments that could shape where it goes next.  

While it focuses on servers as the epicentre of virtualisation innovation, it reflects how virtualisation is increasingly blurring the lines between compute, storage and networking as our demand increases for ever faster processing of a growing body of data. 

The virtualisation journey so far 

Like pinpointing the source of a river, several IT developments could claim to have started the virtualisation journey, but it effectively became a recognisable movement with the first virtual machines (VMs).   

These enabled a single physical server to run multiple workloads, greatly reducing the number of physical servers required by a business to run its IT estate, and creating a new level of flexibility in deploying applications. From there, it was a natural next step to enable individual workloads to be run transparently across multiple physical servers, opening up faster processing of high transaction volumes without resorting to mainframes.             

Application containerisation technologies such as Kubernetes took virtualisation further by liberating applications from the physical overhead of carrying an operating system around with them.     

Hybrid cloud has taken virtualisation capabilities to the next level by extending them to multiple locations across multiple vendors. It is also driving the necessary parallel evolution in management and security capabilities. Spreading multiple workloads across multiple physical servers, locations and vendors adds little value unless the process can be managed transparently and securely; as the number of concurrently running microservices expands exponentially, it takes this management task beyond human scale, so automated management becomes a prerequisite.      

In a little over 30 years, virtualisation has progressed from getting the most out of a single physical server to managing resources securely and transparently across multiple physical locations and vendors. While Serverless Computing might be seen as more of a cloud provider marketing innovation than a technological one, given the cloud provider still relies on physical servers, it’s a sign of how little bearing the physical infrastructure now has on how services are consumed.    

Image
Download our eBook

 

Where will virtualisation go next?  

Arguably, server virtualisation has gone almost as far as it can in terms of releasing compute and storage capabilities from their physical constraints. Now workloads can be run seamlessly across multiple servers, platforms, locations and vendors, it might be hard to see where the next innovation is coming from.  

As ever larger and more complex virtual workloads take management further beyond human scale, artificial intelligence is likely to play a growing role in optimising virtual workloads without the need for human intervention.    

The explosion in data, and the associated hunger for delivering actionable insights at speed from very large data sources, is starting to drive potential seismic shifts across compute, storage and networking.  

For example, while spreading workload across a large number of relatively small cores gives flexibility, horizontal scalability and (theoretically at least), redundancy, it places greater strain on networking resources and is arguably less efficient from a compute perspective than a smaller number of larger cores.       

While these are not virtualisation trends in themselves, they are likely to have a significant bearing on how IT estates function, and therefore on how virtualisation capabilities are deployed.   

What next? 

Logicalis UKI has extensive expertise and experience in helping our clients to make the right, objective virtualisation decisions for their business. To find out more, and to continue the conversation, download our ebook or visit uki.logicalis.com.

Topic

Related Insights

United Kingdom, Nov 23, 2022

Blogs

How to Continue Transforming During a Recession

With the current economic slowdown, it looks like another recession could be on the cards in 2023. This usually heralds a period of consolidation within IT and the closing of the purse strings with regards to planned investments. In previous decades this was standard practice, but now that we’re in a digital age, many businesses can’t afford to slow down their digital transformations if they want to survive.

Learn more

United Kingdom, Nov 23, 2022

Blogs

Reducing Digital Waste

Sustainability is imperative to all our futures and is directly impacted by every device we use that consumes power. This includes the on-premises and cloud infrastructures that power our digital work lives. To be as sustainable as possible we need to ensure that we are consuming the least amount of infrastructure to host our workloads and services, without impacting their availability, performance or governance.

Learn more

United Kingdom, Jun 23, 2022

Blogs

How to make the most of chatbots

Chatbots are all around us. Visit any eCommerce website today and the chances are it’ll instantly present you with a ‘How can I help you today?’ pop-up. The global market for intelligent virtual assistants is expected to grow at a CAGR of 28.5% from 2021 to 2028, and social media is full of amusing stories of parrots and small children wreaking havoc via Alexa.

Learn more

United Kingdom, Jun 20, 2022

Blogs

A brief guide to Business Process Management (BPM)

Effective Business Process Management (BPM) is an essential foundation for any successful business digitalisation and automation strategy. In summary, you can’t successfully automate a process unless you understand it fully, and BPM provides this understanding.

Learn more

United Kingdom, Jun 10, 2022

Blogs

Breaking down the great global data challenge

There are plenty of statistics around the staggering amount of data being created and consumed globally every day. 2.5 quintillion (million million million) bytes created daily by internet users, a 5000% increase in data interactions between 2010 and 2020, and so on.

Learn more

United Kingdom, Jun 3, 2022

Blogs

Explaining some important data management concepts and terms

Recent Logicalis UKI eBooks and articles have focused on the critical role of data in digital business, from unstructured data and the role of Information Lifecycle Management to the importance of robust, business-driven data storage strategy.

Learn more

United Kingdom, Jun 1, 2022

Blogs

How multi cloud data fabrics maximise data value

As data becomes an increasingly valuable asset, organisations have to adapt, to manage and protect their data to ensure it delivers maximum value to the business.

Learn more

United Kingdom, May 30, 2022

Blogs

Why data storage trends are about more than just technology

There are plenty of informative and valuable articles on the web about trends in data storage technology, discussing everything from reducing last byte latency to the wonders of consumption-based pricing. Data and storage are hot topics, unsurprisingly in an age where, as Mckinsey puts it, ‘“digital” and “data” have become the talk of the town.’

Learn more

United Kingdom, May 25, 2022

Blogs

Is it time to stop talking about the death of tape storage?

Heritage technologies - mainframe, Unix and magnetic tape in particular – have long been a rich source for the ‘is x technology dead?’ debate. Technical pundits fill the web with head scratching over why they haven’t disappeared, or defences for their survival.

Learn more

United Kingdom, May 20, 2022

Blogs

How to avoid the pitfalls of ‘good enough’ IT

In challenging economic times, organisations naturally look to cut back or defer non-essential investment. IT spend has traditionally been one of the areas businesses look to first when the need arises to cut budgets or delay projects, sometimes creating a ‘good enough IT’ mindset, where any IT asset that is doing the job reasonably effectively today is maintained beyond the last responsible moment for replacement.

Learn more

United Kingdom, May 16, 2022

Blogs

Should we stop being ageist about Unix?

"Unix is dead, long live Unix" – a headline that is still as topical today as it was in 2009, when a blog with that title was published to mark Unix’s 40th birthday.

Learn more
Advisory Services von Logicalis

Global, Mar 21, 2022

News

Only a third of CIO's cite cyber-risk mitigation as a performance measure

London, 21 March 2022: While 94% of CIOs acknowledged some form of serious threat over the next 12 months, only 27% listed business continuity and resilience as a top-three priority during the next 12 months and barely a third cited risk mitigation as a measure of performance. These findings come from the fourth section of the 2021 Global CIO Survey from Logicalis, a global provider of IT solutions.
Learn more

United Kingdom, Feb 21, 2022

News

The Changing Threat Landscape

The range and impact of Information Security (IS) threats has grown and changed continually over the last 40 years or more, along with the motivations and drivers for such attacks. From when the Morris Worm launched the first, apparently inadvertent, distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack on the internet, the realm of cybercrime has expanded from hackers often driven by little more than curiosity, to organised crime and state sponsorship.
Learn more