First, Thou Shalt Save a Lot of Money

Like Sanzone, many CIOs have realized that virtualization is much more than a cost-saving tool. But almost every CIO's journey to a virtualized environment will start with a data centre consolidation project — and big savings that provide a pleasant starting point with the business side.

Virtualization technology from vendors such as VMware (which owns about 80 percent of the Fortune 1000 market) acts as an "abstraction layer" between physical server boxes and the operating systems and software running on them. This means that up to 30 virtual servers can be housed on just one physical server, though that number varies widely from data centre to data centre (depending on how resource-hungry a company's applications are, for example). CIOs can then create a virtual pool of computing power, which reduces the need for a huge number of servers and allows for much better CPU utilization rates (which typically run anywhere from 5 percent to 15 percent) in servers.

At Credit Suisse, Sanzone will remove more than 2500 of the company's servers (which total more than 20,000) by year's end. In the development environment, he's been able to realize a 20-to-1 ratio for consolidating servers, meaning he consolidated 20 physical servers onto one new server. He's also upped utilization rates on those servers from some as low as 7 percent up to 40 percent.

In turn, he expects to save millions on reductions in maintenance, hardware capital, networking, migration, real estate, and data centre power and cooling costs. Credit Suisse is on track to reduce its data centre power consumption by 1 megawatt by year's end — all courtesy of virtualization. (Recent virtualization research from Aberdeen Group shows that 83 percent of "best in class" companies have increased their server utilization rates, 57 percent have decreased capital costs, and 52 percent have reduced staffing overhead.)

David Siles, who is CTO of the Kane County government in Illinois, has realized massive savings since he started virtualizing in 2005. Those savings have come from a 30-to-1 utilization ratio, the elimination of 110 servers and licensing fees (more than $US100,000); server renewal costs that he avoided ($US370,000); and power and HVAC savings (nearly $US300,000). Siles says that virtualization has not only become a strategic piece of Kane County's infrastructure but, thanks to annual budget cuts, it is how he's been able to provide "the same level of services to the county with less money".