If you have been part of the corporate world for some time already, virtualization is most likely a concept you would have already heard about—if you weren’t completely familiar with it already. Virtualization, in the context of business networks, involves the use of software to divide physical servers into separate environments known as virtual machines. This way, organizations or service providers can make the most of the available capacity of each physical server. Virtualization is a fundamental principle that underpins cloud computing—another popular technology that has made waves in recent years.

Essentially, you can think of the servers within the data centers of cloud providers as repositories of virtualized servers. Cloud providers serve numerous customers all at the same time, but they can’t really dedicate each individual server to each customer, which means virtually partitioning each server becomes necessary. Cloud computing then becomes possible as a service because of this partitioning and manipulation carried out on the servers.

With virtualization, your business can buy and operate just a few servers, and you get to max out their capacity to save a significant amount of money in addition to operating with greater efficiency as a company. In the past, taking advantage of the benefits of virtualization was the sole domain of large enterprises. Nowadays, however, more and more businesses are able to implement it, no matter their size. This is due in no small measure to the availability of efficient database replication and migration software solutions, which ensure that the database migrations undertaken by organizations are complete and successful. An enterprise-class solution that possesses bi-directional replication capability is particularly helpful because it lets systems run concurrently to minimize downtime.

If you’re still on the fence as to whether or not virtualization is for you, we’ll fill you in on some of its benefits.

Less Hardware Costs

Thanks to virtualization, organizations are able to buy and maintain fewer servers, which is very important in terms of financial considerations because hardware often represents the highest cost in data center expenditures. By virtualizing their servers, an organization can reduce the hardware that it needs to purchase and maintain by at least 40 percent.

Space Savings

Naturally, fewer servers used also means less space needed to house those servers. Organizations often find that the space they save can be used for other important purposes.

More Energy Saved

Since creating virtual machines allow organizations to consolidate their physical servers into just a few units, secondary energy expenses related to cooling and operating these servers are also reduced. This could save a company hundreds or even thousands of dollars each year in energy expenditures.

Scalability and Easier Deployment

Virtualization also affords an organization greater flexibility when it comes to the provisioning and deployment of vital infrastructure and applications. This is especially important when a company needs the upgrade to accommodate a sudden increase in data resource requirements.

Reliable Backups and Redeployment Features

With virtualization, it will be easier to recover data in a server that has experienced failure. This is because virtualization allows a company’s IT personnel to create backups and snapshots of the virtual machines quickly.  Being able to efficiently replicate data into a backup location allows you to minimize downtime when disaster strikes.

Provides an Ideal Testing Environment

Virtualization can help organizations considerably reduce the hours they spend on testing and developing applications and software. Hardly any other type of environment is better than a virtual one when it comes to testing because virtualization allows you to revert back to a previous snapshot of the virtual machine when a serious error occurs.

Server virtualization affords many other benefits aside from the basic ones above, but these should give you an idea as to what you can expect when you choose to adopt it for your organization. These benefits will not only bring about positive changes in financial terms but also in terms of improving the productivity and efficiency of your business.