This independent report from The Register outlines some of the strategic thinking required to gain long-term rewards from virtualization projects.

In a busy IT department, it can be all too easy to lose sight of how tactical additions to the IT environment build up over the years. The incumbent workhorse servers plough on day after day in a dark corner of the data center, while new exciting projects take center stage and get shiny new servers to run on. Then, one day, you turn round and find you’ve got several hundred applications to support across a range of departments, and, of course, a myriad of under utilized servers.

Server sprawl is all too common. Major applications and web-facing services can often require an entire server landscape of their own. Even smaller, more-focused applications require a certain amount of horse-power. This should come as no surprise to anyone; for years now, vendors and industry experts have recommended dedicated servers for dedicated services.

Server sprawl has been a part of the IT landscape for years and inevitably works to the detriment of the organization by making routine tasks, such as patch management, application provisioning, and general monitoring and management, increasingly bloated overheads.

But that’s all gradually changing thanks to server virtualization...

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