An assessment helps analyze the current state of affairs and decide what needs to be done to move to a desired state. Business and operational assessments for virtual server implementation examine business needs and IT operational readiness.
Follow these seven steps to assess business and operational readiness:
- Establish “team virtualization.”
- Review top level goals and devise success measures.
- Assess the capital and operating expense of physical server replacement.
- Assess the virtualization readiness of the application users/owners.
- Assess the capability maturity for managing virtual infrastructure.
- Avoid poison pills: relate assessment to virtualization candidates list.
- Develop a checklist of key success indicators, and measure pilot implementation.
For small and mid-sized enterprises, virtualization represents an opportunity to adopt a new and different way of managing infrastructure. Making the transition involves trust. Demonstrable operational capability will help assure architecture performance levels and business outcomes for key stakeholders.