Virtualization: What Your CFO Needs to Know
Posted on May 31st, 2010 by admin |
In this series, we’ll focus on the implications of specific technology solutions for CFOs. Though they are the keepers of a company’s financial health, they don’t always understand the advantages that come with certain technology solutions, and IT professionals sometimes take a suboptimal approach when explaining these concepts to the finance team. This series is intended to help make those conversations easier and more effective.
Your CFO is focused on keeping costs under control, and a request for new technology tends to be met with skepticism. Whether he thinks you’re chasing something new and exciting or believes that the status quo is just fine for now, the CFO isn’t likely to start writing checks just because you asked. Emphasizing the technological advantages of a particular solution won’t help much either, especially for virtualization technologies, which can be difficult for anyone working outside the infrastructure team to grasp fully. So, when you reach out to your CFO to talk about the need for a virtualization solution (e.g., storage, server or desktop), you need to make sure your pitch is tailored to a decidedly non-technical audience.
Virtualization is a technology that should make your business case to the CFO fairly easy. The benefits are both substantial and easy to measure (especially from a budgetary standpoint). Instead of getting lost in the jargon of the datacenter, focus on a few key concepts
Portability: Virtualization makes it easy to reallocate resources dynamically and across platforms. Since these resources become “portable,” you won’t need to plan and provision for equipment on a platform-by-platform basis. Instead, you can “borrow” from under-utilized systems. This means that your spending will decrease … an outcome that will resonate with even the toughest of CFOs.
Efficiency: Whether it’s adding new equipment or managing a heterogeneous environment, time is an issue. Virtualization makes the entire process easier, freeing up IT resources to work on the projects that will move the enterprise forward. So, in addition to the cost benefits of operational efficiency, you’ll also pick up an ROI opportunity (associated with the redeployment of IT resources to high-impact projects).
Performance: With your existing equipment, end-user performance will be improved (especially if you’re trying to resolve performance problems now), because more resources can be made available without additional investments in equipment. As a result, virtualization can drive employee productivity company-wide.
The technology behind virtualization is what makes all this possible, but it won’t matter much to the CFO. Instead, focus on the implications for dollars and cents, and your business case is likely to meet with a much better reception.
Tags: Desktop Virtualization, IT operations, operations, ROI, Server Virtualization, storage virtualization, Virtualization
Posted in Virtualization |
Tags: Tags: Desktop Virtualization, IT operations, operations, ROI, Server Virtualization, storage virtualization, Virtualization
