In a best-of-breed virtual desktop infrastructure, where do you turn for help? At the enterprise level, there’s rarely one vendor involved, which means a variety of skills – and team members – may e involved in resolving a particular problem. For your IT managers, this can be frustrating. End users need support, and the IT manager’s reputation is on the line. Time spent hunting for the right people trims what’s available for remediation within standing SLAs.

To make the different virtualization layers work together, a variety of solutions may be necessary. The result is a streamlined infrastructure and improved business user experience, but it can create complications when something goes awry. This is the case when any environment relies on integrated systems for disparate technology vendors, and there are measures you can implement to protect your company.

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How can virtualizing your server infrastructure help your business development team? Sure, there are clear business benefits to server virtualization, but to draw a straight line to sales and client activity may not seem possible. Step back for a moment and consider how your clients interact with your business, though, and it doesn’t take long to understand how your servers can make a profound difference in your top line.

In just about every business, it’s your existing clients that have the greatest potential for new revenue. New client acquisition is extremely valuable, but it’s also hard-won and far more expensive than engaging your existing client base for new business opportunities. So, if you can deliver a superior experience to your clients, especially if they interact directly or indirectly (e.g., through a call center) with your systems, the IT department has a profound opportunity to influence overall business performance.

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There’s always some tension between strategy and leading-edge implementation. You want to take advantage of new systems and technologies that can help your company advance in the marketplace, but at the same time, you don’t want “new” and “exciting” to outpace your core objectives and wind up driving your company at the expense of core business objectives.

Yeah, that’s a mouthful, but it’s incredibly important.

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When power becomes more expensive, you feel it. For the months when there’s a spike in oil pricing, “green IT” becomes a priority, only to fade when the cost to run your datacenter comes down again. Even if the ups and downs average out to a tolerable price, the fluctuations make IT budgeting a vexing endeavor, leaving you unable to forecast your costs effectively … and ultimately forcing uncomfortable conversations with the executive team.

Implement a virtual infrastructure, and you’ll gain energy cost containment and better budget predictability along with a more agile datacenter.

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Are you ready to make your datacenter a little easier to manage? For most IT professionals, the answer to that question is pretty obvious. There’s always room for improvement … in ways that cut overhead, make workloads a bit more manageable and increase the quality of service you provide to your end users. Cisco’s Unified Computing System can streamline your datacenter, making your team – and your entire enterprise – more productive at a fraction of the cost.

Here are five ways that Cisco UCS makes infrastructure management easier:

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Are you spending too much time managing your infrastructure? It’s not like you have a choice, of course. When you need to tend to your datacenter, you do it, and it’s your other IT initiatives that suffer. A simplified, straightforward approach not only cures the headaches associated with IT management, it frees up your team to focus on the projects that will drive ROI and company growth.

Chances are you’re overspending on your infrastructure. Research from Cisco estimates that infrastructure management ties up 70 percent of your budget. So, that only gives you 30 percent to allocate for the future. Simplifying your infrastructure could tip those scales a bit – making your department far more effective.

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Disaster recovery and business continuity can be a challenge to manage effectively. In addition to investing considerable amounts of capital into robust, reliable solutions, you’re stuck with the nagging thought that you’re putting your budget into something you hope you never actually have to use. Anything you can do to simplify your D/R framework comes with an inherent cost advantage, particularly through a reduction in complexity and resource-hours committed to planning and managing the environment.

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Once you’ve made the decision to adopt a managed infrastructure, you need to identify the factors that matter most to your company. Quite simply, you want to know that your infrastructure will be there for you when you need it.

While service-level agreements (SLAs) provide procedures and remedies for downtime, performance degradation and other potential problems, they are inherently retrospective: SLAs talk about how a problem can be fixed. When choosing a managed services provider, you should take a look at the measures in place that will keep problems from arising.

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IT directors and CIOs are always looking at the total cost of ownership (TCO) of enterprise-wide technology. The goal, of course, is to keep TCO as low as possible while maximizing the services and capabilities delivered to the business areas. Virtualization provides a variety of cost-containment advantages, making it possible to manage IT expenses without degrading service to end users.

Here are five ways that virtualization can help you lower your infrastructure TCO:

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The in-house versus outsourcing decision shouldn’t be an easy one. After all, you’re infrastructure is at stake … which puts your company’s ability to operate in play. The risks don’t mean that you should choose one option over another, but they do suggest that you should treat this decision with the appropriate gravity.

If you’re thinking about moving to a managed infrastructure, which can come with many advantages, think about the IT resources that your company consumes, as well as how heavily you want to commit to operating and maintaining your own infrastructure. Variable system demand and a desire to focus on your core business while maintaining a lean IT department usually indicate that a managed services approach to your IT infrastructure is prudent.

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