By Alan Laing, Vice President EMEA at Acronis

The topic of virtualisation has gone from hype to reality. More and more businesses benefit from the advantages of virtual environments. But not every company has thought about protecting its virtual environment and how to go about it. Are the virtual machines backed up regularly? Is there a comprehensive and viable business continuity plan in place in case of an emergency? There is a plea for a comprehensive data protection across all environments.

In conversations with colleagues from other companies or when looking in IT magazines – one topic that is hard to miss is virtualisation. But unlike previous years, the conversation now is very real about virtualisation projects and exchange experiences, including tips and tricks. The advantages of virtual environments are still in the foreground, like the optimal utilisation of existing resources, the speed and flexibility and the savings in hardware costs.

For mid-sized mainstream companies, the virtualisation success story has become a reality. According to research from the Acronis Global Disaster Recovery Index 2012 this size of company will grow its virtualisation infrastructure by 21% in 2012.  This is 50% higher than the pace identified in a recent Gartner report that predicted virtualisation adoption by larger enterprises is to increase by 14% over the same period.

£80 off PowerEdge servers over £799 with promo code 8FZ1TRW6$SCW91

Although virtualisation is already present, in terms of data protection in virtual environments, there is a lot of catching up to do. No matter whether the data is in physical or virtual environments – if the worst case occurs and the machines fail, it is imperative that lost data is accessible quickly. A key finding of the Acronis study was, however, that only 37 percent of the companies that have deployed virtual machines, backup their virtual machines daily or more often. 33 percent of respondents indicated that their virtual machines are backed-up less than their physical ones.

This surprising result may at first glance be understandable. Many companies facing declining IT budgets and shrinking IT resources are overwhelmed with complex technologies, or simply don’t see the need to make provisions for an emergency, if they haven’t already experienced one. For many companies, the sheer coexistence of several backup solutions for physical servers and workstations on the one hand and virtual machines on the other hand is a challenge. With three or more backup solutions, developing a business continuity plan can become impossible.

A possible alternative to simplify the process, especially for mid sized businesses, is a unified solution. A solution, where Windows and Linux servers, workstations and laptops, virtual environments and cloud storage can be managed centrally and that combines backup, disaster recovery and data protection functionality at the same time. The consolidation of all tools in one solution simplifies the centralised and automated control over one console for all environments. This means in case of an emergency the recovery process is more simple, reliable, transparent and therefore less time-consuming. It also means costs and risks in the business continuity plan can be easier to estimate and predict, which results in the risk of downtime rapidly declining.

These solutions are more innovative! Recent technologies such as data storage in the cloud play an increasingly important role in data storage. Those who think about tomorrow and integrate this technology today will be one step ahead of the competition.

By Rory Whelan, Voice Marketing Manager, eReceptionist

You have all worked hard all year, hit your targets and enjoyed the office party. But while your staff take a break you face a bleak time operating the office phones in case any of those last minute orders go astray.

Alternatively, you could sneak off, put on your slippers and sit by the fire with your family, safe in the knowledge that all your calls are taken care of, even with no one on the premises.

How? By being in your virtual office. A virtual office is a modern day solution to this age-old problem allowing you to have a Christmas break and a business. Even when small businesses are growing too fast to meet demand, it’s so easy to create a professional, established image by using virtual receptionist tools.

Digitisation and virtual offices

Phone systems used to be large, involved engineers and were prohibitively expensive for many small businesses. Then along came digital communications and everything changed. Now, communication is mobile, instant and digital.

Small companies now have an advantage; unlike larger companies, they don’t need expensive fixed phone lines or the premises to house them in. Utilising mobile and virtual office technology they respond quickly, efficiently and cost effectively to customer queries – no matter where they are in the world.

Service with a smile

From the start of telephone, large businesses have used internal switchboards to give callers a list of options to direct their call. Big businesses know that answering calls, rather than going to voicemail is critical to productive engagement.

In addition, surveys show this to be true with a massive 85% of new customers preferring to move on if they get through to voicemail rather than speaking to someone.

However, by creating a virtual office with an e-receptionist to answer calls, smart, nimble businesses are gaining all the benefits of a real life receptionist (or an expensive PBX system) at a fraction of the cost. There’s no hardware or software to be installed or support. All you need is an existing phone line and that includes the mobile in your pocket.

Using a virtual landline number (and that’s a real number, we call it virtual because there’s no fixed line to install) you get the benefits of the professional image that a landline number brings to your business as well as a welcome greeting and caller menu bespoke to your business.

You can also choose a local landline number – anywhere in the UK – as customers often choose local numbers for that first call. But you can also bring your business to national attention and get calls from all over the country with a non-geographic or freephone 0800 numbers.

Always connected

Calls can be forwarded to any location, whether to your home, mobile, hotel room, or if you are paying family a visit over the Christmas period, a colleague’s number or even mum and dad’s! Adjusting your call routing can all be done online – giving you flexibility throughout the year to match your schedule to that of the business.

Finally, with a cloud provider managing your business calls, you’ll get all the quality of regular business phone line – without some of the dropped calls or quality issues that users sometimes find with VoIP.

All in all, having a service such as this allows you to enjoy your Christmas break, safe in the knowledge that you’re not missing out on business just because you’re away from your desk. Meaning that you, your family, your colleagues and customers can have a Merry Christmas and to come back relaxed and refreshed, ready for another successful year.

Steve Quane, Trend Micro, Chief Product Officer discusses how Trend Micro Deep Security integrates with VMware vShield and the benefits of this joint solution.

The infographic “Looking Beyond the Challenges of Securing Virtual Environments” shows virtualization-specific issues that can introduce threats to the corporate network such as legacy exploits, PoCs (proof-of-concept), and zero-day attacks. Once enterprises slip through security holes, these may potentially damage a brand name/image or worse lead to the loss of company “crown jewels.”
From the threat research team at Trend Micro, here is a most excellent infographic about threats to virtualized environments. I don’t know if it’s more “Tron” or “Death Star” but it’s cool.

This is an extract from Dell’s ‘Manage your data: Virtualisation for small business’ whitepaper.

Although many small businesses have already implemented virtualization, budget and resources are sometimes impediments to rolling it out more broadly within their organizations.

Of those small businesses that have not yet virtualized, lack of budget is often the leading reason. Other key inhibitors include uncertainty over the business benefits, which solution to adopt, and a lack of IT skills.

Virtualization is only achieved through careful deployment and failure to do this could mean a company falls prey to server sprawl where multiple, under-utilized servers take up more space and consume more resources than can be justified by their workload or indeed cannot be fiscally justified. Common causes of server sprawl include the purchase of a large number of inexpensive, low-end servers and the practice of dedicating servers to single applications. This is a phenomenon created by a virtualization strategy that is not tightly managed and planned, resulting in increased management costs to support numerous virtual machines which may not be needed.

This is an extract from Dell’s ‘Manage your data: Virtualisation for small business’ whitepaper.

Choosing the right technology with the right processing power and performance is a key consideration for any small business. Server virtualization is a highly effective approach and there are a number of reasons why companies should begin looking at virtualization as a possible route, either because of the benefits that it can deliver or because of an existing or known business need.

Server virtualization might be right for your business if you want to achieve any of the following:

• Reduce unnecessary hardware and maintenance costs

• Change and scale the infrastructure to support your business needs, without ripping out and starting again

• Reduce the risks of IT outages and data loss, and implement affordable business continuity strategies

• Provide streamlined test and development environments that are adaptable and configurable

• Make better use of IT resources by reducing the time spent on routine IT administrative tasks, such as adding and managing new server workloads or adding new employees

• Grow in your existing space and energy Envelope

The time might be right to introduce a virtualized approach if there is a need to replace aging servers or to improve the low utilisation rates of existing servers. Virtualization could offer a way to solve constrained data centre space, minimise the risk of disruption from natural disasters or provide a path to handle significant business growth ahead.

Virtualization can be evaluated at a company from a number of perspectives. It can be part of a wider server refresh or address business needs across a number of different areas including power-saving, business continuity or disaster recovery. Some companies choose to move non-mission critical applications to a virtualized environment first in order to test its positive impact while not taking any risks with regard to core business functions.

This is an extract from Dell’s ‘Manage your data: Virtualisation for small business’ whitepaper.

Server virtualization is one of the core elements of an automated and agile infrastructure. It helps speed development cycles and deployment of new resources, and is a key enabler of broader, forward-looking IT strategies like cloud computing. Ultimately, virtualization can help small businesses reduce the cost of IT growth while improving the IT organisation’s responsiveness to business needs – an essential aspect of any company’s ability to grow.

Managing the IT environment carefully in this way brings tangible, lasting business benefits. Clearly, the reduction of overhead and management costs is a primary benefit and the main reason that many businesses look at virtualization as a possible option in streamlining processes. But with fewer servers to run, the cost benefits also extend to power-saving, cooling and data centre real-estate.

While cost reduction is often the starting point, the advantages of virtualization extend well beyond total cost of ownership. Aside from money-saving, virtualization can help speed up development cycles and allow businesses to deploy new resources faster as a way to keep up with changes in the market and stay ahead of competition.

Using advanced features such as live migration, high availability (HA) and recovery options it is also possible to implement cost-effective, high availability disaster-recovery strategies that are easy to manage and cost effective. By making IT systems less likely to fail, and by making server restoration substantially faster, virtualization enables businesses of all sizes to reduce the cost and minimize the impact of downtime — in terms of lost productivity, lost sales or even damaged reputation. These benefits represent real business drivers and highlight the growing importance of IT in ensuring business continuity. So not only can virtualization result in saving money across the IT infrastructure and other areas, it can also act as an important safety net and insurance policy in protecting the business.