Introduction
The reduction of costs is a key business driver in many industries, a fact that should be self evident in an economy that is driven by a need for greater returns on investment and profitability. In sectors where information technology is a requirement, the cost of provisioning hardware and software is a major factor, so it is natural that businesses seek to reduce their IT costs.
Cost reduction is constantly subject to trends and new ideas which are often driven by solution providers. Ten years ago a common route was consolidation on large single machines such as Sun’s E10000 and F15000 or HP’s Superdome series, mainframe style machines that could run multiple applications in Unix environments. As space and power became premium, and as low end processors became more powerful, single and multiprocessor computers could be built as small rack mounted machines, thus improving floor space usage and power distribution. The increasing maturity of free and open source software, primarily Linux and its associated software such as the apache HTTP server, tomcat java application server and MySQL database engine has also made moving away from costly proprietary and licensed software viable.
In recent years, improvements in the technology, both in software and hardware, have made virtualisation an attractive proposition for businesses looking for hardware updates, datacentre consolidation and general reduction of the IT estate. On paper, such propositions are immediately attractive to management as they show potential quick returns in such areas as power and rack space, and longer term advantages in return on investment in hardware. In practise, transformation projects can be protracted, frustrating and ultimately unsatisfactory if not planned and managed properly.
This white paper will attempt to identify the common issues associated with migration and transformation exercises in order to highlight the potential complexity of such processes before they are started.
Chapter 2: What will change?
Chapter 3: New landscapes
Chapter 4: Championing the process
Chapter 5: Execution
Chapter 6: Supporting the future
