IT MANAGEMENT RESEARCH,

INDUSTRY ANALYSIS AND CONSULTING

Infrastructure is Not Your Business

There are many tools for technical management of virtual infrastructures – hypervisor configuration,

VM performance monitoring, memory management, etc. Without doubt, such low-level infrastruc-

ture management is important, but ultimately IT needs to be supporting business-critical application

services, not just infrastructure. In fact, Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) research shows

74% of enterprises with virtualization are using their virtual infrastructure to support production

applications1.

Managing a vendor- or platform-specific virtual infrastructure is just one part of managing business-

critical applications. EMA data shows that most enterprises actually have multiple virtualization ven-

dors – not just VMware, but also Microsoft, Citrix, Red Hat, IBM, Oracle/Sun, etc. Most enterprises

also have multiple platforms – not just Windows, but also Linux, UNIX, i5/OS, z/OS, etc. In fact

the average enterprise has four different vendors, and four different platforms, in their virtualization

environment alone. Moreover, the average enterprise also has a significant traditional or physical infra-

structure – EMA research shows that in most cases, only 25-30% of the server environment is actually

virtualized2.

While virtualization vendors like VMware have great tools to sup-

port virtual infrastructure, they do not provide sophisticated tools

for broad, multi-platform, multi-vendor, physical and virtual busi-

ness workload management.

Focus on What Matters

Managing Business Workloads

Automation must cover

all platforms, vendors,

infrastructure, and applications.

Management and automation for business-critical workloads must cover all platforms and vendors, and

both infrastructure and applications, across physical or virtual environments. Without this broad per-

spective, management is too myopic for complex environments, leading to slow response, inefficient

use of staff, and other service problems.

EMA therefore distinguishes between “virtualization management” (i.e. low-level, technology-focused,

component management) and “virtual systems management” (i.e. managing the whole system, from

the infrastructure to the application – and even the end user – including multiple disciplines such as

lifecycle management, performance monitoring, workload automation, and more.)

EMA recommends virtual systems management for business-critical workloads because EMA research

shows that a systems-based approach has significant and measurable benefits. For example, with high-

level management discipline, mean time to repair (MTTR) is up to three times faster; SLA achievement

(uptime) goes from 99.5% to 99.999%; administrators can manage up to eight times as many VMs;

consolidation ratios are up to three times greater; provisioning is up to four times faster; and more3.

Moreover, integrated virtual systems management is even more likely to yield best practice outcomes,

including measurable improvements in provisioning and deployment times, restore success rates, power

reduction, resource utilization, server consolidation, and administrator efficiency4.

From EMA Research Report, Virtualization and Management: Trends, Forecasts, and Recommendations,

http://www.enterprisemanagement.com/research/asset.php?id=721

2 Ibid.

3 From EMA Research Report, Best Practices in Virtual Systems Management,

http://www.enterprisemanagement.com/research/asset.php?id= 04

4 Ibid.

Achieving Virtualization Control with Intelligent Service Automation

©2009 Enterprise Management Associates, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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